Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No. 55

This is an extract from:

Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No. 55 Editor: Alice-Mary Talbot Published by

Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection Washington, D.C. Issue year 2001 © 2002 Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University Washington, D.C. Printed in the United States of America

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Death in Byzantium GEORGE T. DENNIS

or the Byzantines, as for us, the sun rises each morning and sets each evening. But they also believed that there would come one day, for each individual as well as for the whole of creation, which would not have an evening—the day without an evening, hJ ajne´ spero" hJme´ ra.1 And this may help us understand how the Byzantine people looked upon what we call death. There is one way in which we enter this world, but many ways in which we leave it. In reflecting on the deaths of emperors, Niketas Choniates observed that God does not like to direct human affairs in the same manner all the time but prefers some variety.2 Thus one ruler is drowned, another decapitated, another killed by the enemy, still another gone mad and left to die in oblivion, while others “cross over to the other side as though they had simply closed their eyes in sleep.” Of the eighty-eight emperors who ruled, from the first Constantine to the twelfth of that name, thirty-seven died natural deaths, three died in accidents, five in battle, thirty by other forms of violence, and thirteen were forced to abdicate and enter a monastery, regarded as another kind of death. Clearly, though, our concern is not limited to emperors, for death came, suddenly or slowly, to men and women of all classes and of all ages in the Byzantine world. Death, the Byzantine people heard in church, was a consequence of sin, and, in addition to their daily experience of it, they were advised to reflect constantly on the transitory nature of this life.3 Monks and nuns, in particular, were called to meditate on death. Typical is the exhortation by Symeon the New Theologian to his monks, “On the Remembrance of Death.” 4 The sixth rung on the Ladder of Paradise of John Klimakos bears the same title: “On the Remembrance of Death.” 5 Several instances of death, as recorded in our sources, may teach us something about Byzantine attitudes regarding that eventuality. At the beginning, however, we should note that the Byzantines were certain that death was not the end; the sources give almost no indication of disbelief in an afterlife. We may also note that, except in very rare circum-

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See St. Basil, In Hexaem., 2, PG 29:52A; John of Damascus, Carmen in Pascha, PG 96:844B; The Letters of Manuel II Palaeologus, ed. G. Dennis, CFHB 8 (Washington, D.C., 1977), ep. 31.97, p. 85. Cf. St. Augustine, Confessions, 13, 35–36. 2 Nicetae Choniatae Historia, ed. J. L. van Dieten, CFHB 11 (Berlin, 1975), p. 424, 33–46. 3 See Genesis 3; Romans 5:12. 4 Cate´che`ses, ed. B. Krivocheine, 3 vols. (Paris, 1963–65); English trans. C. J. de Catanzaro, The Discourses (New York-Toronto, 1980), disc. 21. 5 Ioannis Climaci, Scala Paradisi, PG 88:793. 1

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stances, they did not practice embalming or cremation.6 Moreover, because of the imprecise nature of so many of our sources, what is presented here must be largely anecdotal. Like us, the Byzantines tended to avoid the words death and dying. They preferred various euphemisms. A person had simply “gone away,” had vanished or departed from the world of mortals or was no longer among them.7 Emperor Constantine VII “exchanged his life and was free to rest over there.” 8 A person fulfilled “our common debt”; he completed or, in one instance, emptied his quiver of his allotted portion of life.9 One freed oneself from the things here.10 Individuals were “cut down like a shoot by the sickle of death.” 11 In 1411 a Turkish prince “met an end quite worthy of his ways”; he was strangled by his brother.12 Some soldiers who fell in battle “embraced mother earth,” and others “added to the population of Hades.” 13 Soldiers falling from a battlement demolished by Byzantine artillery “were pitched headlong into the entranceway of Hades . . . and were soon woefully swimming across Acheron.” 14 In another siege, the wall collapsed and the men on it “failed to answer roll call.” 15 In a letter to Tsar Symeon of Bulgaria, Patriarch Nicholas I made this observation: “Human life is unstable. It is not only the old, such as myself, who are taken by death. Many who are in their prime fall to death’s sickle.” 16 Old for the Byzantines meant fifty to sixty years of age, with seventy and beyond being regarded as extreme old age, but, because of the high rate of infant mortality, it has been calculated that the average life expectancy in Byzantium was about thirty-five years.17 Of the major imperial families, the Macedonians averaged a life span of fifty-nine years, although Basil II lived to seventytwo, his brother Constantine VIII to seventy, and his niece Theodora to seventy-six; the Komnenoi averaged sixty-one years, and the Palaiologoi sixty.18 Andronikos II lived to the age of seventy-two and his great-grandson Manuel to seventy-five. Literary figures and scholars seem to have lived long lives, many attaining the biblical three score and ten (Psalm 90 [89]:10), and some, like Demetrios Kydones, hypochondriac though he was, living well beyond that. Monastic saints, who professed to despise this life, seem to have clung to it longer than others, many living into their eighties and nineties, and the hermits outlasted all of them, with St. Antony supposedly dying at 105 years of age and St. Paul, the first hermit, at 113. P. Koukoules, Byzantinon bios kai politismos, 6 vols. (Athens, 1948–57), 4:193–94. E.g., Leonis diaconi historiae libri X [Leo the Deacon], ed. C. B. Hase (Bonn, 1828), bk. 2, chap. 10, p. 31.7; Nicholas I Patriarch of Constantinople, Letters, ed. R. J. Jenkins and L. G. Westerink, CFHB 6 (Washington, D.C., 1973), ep. 1.161–62, p. 10; Choniates, Historia, 51, 79; Manuel, Letters, ep. 56.3, p. 159. 8 Leo the Deacon, bk. 1, chap. 2, p. 6.2. 9 Ioannis Skylitzae synopsis historiarum, ed. I. Thurn, CFHB 5 (Berlin-New York, 1973), 80.75; Choniates, Historia, 38. 10 Manuel, Letters, ep. 1.17, p. 3. 11 Nicholas, Letters, ep. 156.35, p. 476. 12 Manuel, Letters, ep. 57.9–10, p. 161. 13 Eustazio di Tessalonica, La espugnazione di Tessalonica, ed. S. Kyriakidis, trans. V. Rotolo (Palermo, 1961); Greek text reprinted with English trans. by J. Melville-Jones, Eustathios of Thessaloniki. The Capture of Thessaloniki (Canberra, 1988), p. 106, 1, p. 148. 14 Choniates, Historia, 134. 15 Leo the Deacon, bk. 3, chap. 11, p. 53.12. 16 Nicholas, Letters, ep. 24.31–35, p. 168. 17 See A.-M. Talbot, “Old Age in Byzantium,” BZ 77 (1984): 267–78, esp. 268. 18 Ibid., 269. 6 7

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In general, though, death came to the Byzantines early. Theodore of Stoudios, for example, wrote to console Leo the orphanotrophos, whose first two sons had died as babies, only to have another son die at three years of age.19 The mortality rate for the first five years seems to have been about fifty percent, although reliable statistics are unattainable. St. Mary the Younger had four sons, two of whom died before their fifth birthday.20 In a village in Macedonia, about the year 1300, thirty-two babies were born; eight died within a year and another eight within five years.21 In the collection of military treatises in the codex Mediceo-Laurentianus 55, 4, Demetrios Laskaris Leontares recorded births and deaths in his family. Between 1407 and 1434, twelve children were born to him (seven boys and five girls), and seven of these died in childhood (four boys and three girls).22 Chances of survival after one’s fifth birthday may have been better, but, even among the wealthier families who had access to better health care, death came at every age. The son of Emperor John VII Palaiologos, Andronikos, died at seven years of age and Michael Psellos’ daughter, Styliane, at nine.23 Anna Komnene bewailed the death of her brother who was so young and in the most charming time of life.24 In 1142, Alexios, the thirty-sixyear-old son of Emperor John Komnenos, died of a rushing fever in his head, and his second son, Andronikos, died suddenly while escorting his brother’s body to Constantinople.25 Consider the progeny of Basil I; he had at least five sons and four daughters, but only one surviving grandson, and three generations later his direct posterity died out. In the prime of life the invincible hero of the borderlands, Digenes Akritas, fell ill; he called in an army doctor who declared the illness fatal, and the next day, “folding his hands cross-wise, the noble youth surrendered his soul to the angels of the Lord.” 26 When the time came, one hoped to die surrounded by one’s family and strengthened by the sacraments of the church, perhaps with the eucharist on one’s tongue, and such tranquil deaths are recorded in our sources. Saints, of course, could predict the hour of their death, and pious Christians, whose reckoning was less exact, tried to plan ahead, sometimes by founding a monastery, in which prayers would be said for their souls, often by taking a monastic name and being clothed in the monastic habit before dying. St. Philaretos the Merciful made detailed preparations for his final hour; he paid for a tomb in the convent of Krisis, assembled his children and grandchildren and spoke with each of them.27 The blissful deaths of saintly monks and nuns, often surrounded by their disciples, conclude many a vita. But not all were so blessed. The violent and painful deaths of some, both saints and sinners, are reported either to edify the reader or to instill salutary fear, the horrendous martyrdom of St. Stephen the Younger and the ghastly Theodori Studitae Epistulae, ed. G. Fatouros, 2. vols. CFHB 31 (Berlin, 1992), ep. 29; see also ep. 18. AASS, Nov. 4 (Brussels, 1925), 692–705; English trans. by A Laiou in Holy Women of Byzantium, ed. A. M. Talbot (Washington, D.C., 1996), 239–83, esp. 258–61. 21 A. Laiou-Thomadakis, Peasant Society in the Late Byzantine Empire (Princeton, N.J., 1977), 294–96. 22 Fol. 253v; see A. M. Bandini, Catalogus codicum mss. Bibliothecae Mediceae Laurentianae, 3 vols. (Florence, 1764–70), 2:218–38. 23 ¨ BG 16 (1967): G. Dennis, “An Unknown Byzantine Emperor, Andronicus V Palaeologus (1400–1407),” JO 175–87; Michael Psellos, Funeral Oration on His Daughter, ed. K. Sathas, Mesaiwnikh´ Biblioqh´ kh, vol. 5 (Paris, 1876), 62–87. 24 Anne Comne`ne Alexiade, ed. and trans. B. Leib, 3 vols. (Paris, 1937–43), 15, 5, 4; vol. 3, p. 206, 3–10. 25 Choniates, Historia, 38; Kinnamos, Epitome, ed. A. Meineke (Bonn, 1836), p. 27. 26 Digenis Akritas, ed. and trans. E. Jeffreys (Cambridge, 1998), bk. 8, pp. 218–20, 226. 27 M. H. Fourmy and M. Leroy, “La vie de s. Philare`te,” Byzantion 9 (1934): 85–170, esp. 151–55. 19 20

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punishment of the woman who betrayed him being good examples.28 Stressful in its own way was the death of Alexios I in the Mangana monastery, where he had gone for medical care; while he “directed his gaze upon the angels who would lead his soul to the next world,” his wife and children fought bitterly about the succession.29 Diseases of all sorts were endemic in the Byzantine world and, despite relatively advanced medical care, more often than not proved fatal. Historians such as Anna Komnene and Michael Psellos delight in giving pathological observations in clinical detail. The lives of saints and miracle tales also furnish abundant medical information about diseases and afflictions which were ordinarily incurable. Even in the great cities, with their aqueducts and sewers, poor sanitation and, at times, scarcity of food contributed to the general mortality, not only of the poor but of wealthier citizens as well. And, of course, when the plague struck, death was ubiquitous and quotidian. Injuries, whether incurred in one’s house or outdoors, easily led to infection and death. One need only recall the terrible death of John Komnenos, who had accidentally cut his hand on a poisoned arrow, described in agonizing detail by Choniates.30 Then, as now, accidents were a major cause of death. Members of the upper classes might suffer fatal injuries while hunting or on a wild horseback ride, while other citizens might be run over and crushed by wagon wheels or fall off a ladder. Even a saint might meet with a fatal accident, as did Athanasios of Athos while supervising the reconstruction of a church.31 The workplace was full of hazards; again, saints’ lives and miracle tales are very informative. Indeed, one could probably rely on the vitae of the saints to compile an essay on industrial accidents in Byzantium.32 Violence, of course, begot death. We may note, however, that violence against oneself, suicide, is rarely attested in the sources.33 In the cities, especially in the capital, one might fall victim to the armed robbers and murderers who lurked in the alleys. And the countryside was swarming with cutthroats. “No matter where one goes,” Kydones complained, “mountains or plains, bandits are lying in wait.” 34 Domestic violence and child abuse, then as now, went largely unreported. But we read of St. Thomais of Lesbos who died after repeated beatings by her husband and of an earlier St. Thomais, of Alexandria, who was beaten to death by her father-in-law.35 Then, too, thousands of deaths might result from periodic outbreaks of urban violence, such as the Nika riots in Constantinople in 532 or the so-called Zealot uprising in Thessalonike in the 1340s. Violent death, as mentioned above, did not spare even the emperors. As he joined in singing the liturgical hymns on 28 La vie d’Etienne le Jeune par Etienne le diacre, ed. and trans. M. F. Auze´py (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 169–70, 174–75. 29 Choniates, Historia, 6–8; Anna Komnene offers a different version: Alexiade, 15, 11; vol. 3, pp. 229–41. 30 Choniates, Historia, 40–41. 31 Vitae duae antiquae sancti Athanasii Athonitae, ed. J. Noret (Turnhout, 1982), pp. 112–14. 32 On dangers faced by construction workers see R. Ousterhout, Master Builders of Byzantium (Princeton, N.J., 1999). 33 Theodore of Stoudios mentions suicides: epp. 449, 462. A defeated Turkish officer killed himself in 1085: Alexiade, 6, 9, 3; vol. 2, p. 65, 18–22. The debt-ridden scribe Melitas hanged himself in 1303: Georgii Pachymeris De Michaele et Andronico Palaeologis libri XIII, ed. I. Bekker (Bonn, 1835), 2:385–88. See ODB 3:1974–75. 34 De´me´trius Cydone`s Correspondance, ed. R. J. Loenertz, 2 vols., ST 186, 208 (Vatican City, 1956–60), ep. 264.55–64; vol. 2, p. 175. 35 See BHG 3, p. 77; also Talbot, Holy Women (as above, note 20), 291–95.

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Christmas morning in 820, Leo V was brutally stabbed by conspirators wearing clerical vestments.36 A drunken Michael III was murdered by his co-emperor Basil in September 867.37 Who can forget the cruel murder of Nikephoros Phokas as he lay asleep on a leopard skin on his bedroom floor?38 Recall too the horrible drawn-out murder of Andronikos I by a blood-crazed mob and that of Romanos III in his bath.39 While the Byzantines faced constant dangers on land, they were even more afraid of the sea.40 Tidal waves might inundate their coastal villages, and to board a ship was to risk certain death. Violent tempests might arise without warning and sink the stoutest ship with all hands. St. Gregory the Decapolite prayed that a monk whose small boat had capsized “would not become a victim of the sea and take up residence in the briny depths.” 41 In addition to shipwreck, moreover, passengers and crew might suffer a cruel death or be sold into slavery by the pirates who infested the sea-lanes.42 Finally, the Byzantines were terrified by the denizens of the deep, real and imaginary. A disobedient monk, for example, went fishing and was attacked by a huge shark, which would have quickly devoured him if St. Niphon had not been praying for him; this was not an ordinary shark but the devil in disguise.43 The Byzantines were reminded of all this by portrayals of the last judgment, such as the one in Torcello, which depict the sea monsters spitting out all those who had died at sea. Death, of course, always accompanied the Byzantine armies. As with all premodern armies, there were probably more deaths from disease than from combat. Army doctors were advised that they had to be able to deal with the consequences of soldiers’ eating unripe fruit as well as with their wounds.44 Casualties in pitched battles were always high, especially among troops pursued or surrounded by a victorious enemy. The slaughter in 811 of the Hikanatoi regiment, composed of sons of army officers, is particularly poignant: “handsome young soldiers in the bloom of manhood, some just recently married, all horribly killed.” 45 And the Byzantines never forgot the forty-two military officers and civilians taken prisoner at Amorion in 838, who were brutally tortured and killed in captivity.46 Wounds received in combat, especially in the head and torso, were almost invariably mortal. In the desperate battle against the Bulgarians in July 811, the emperor’s son Staurakios was severely wounded in the lower back; taken to the capital, he died in agony two months later.47 Death was caused by showers of arrows and by stones hurled by artilSkylitzes, 22.29–23.56. Skylitzes, 114.50. 38 Leo the Deacon, bk. 5, chap. 7; pp. 87–88. 39 Choniates, Historia, 349–51; Michael Psellos, Chronography, 3, 26: Michele Psello, Imperatori di Bisanzio, ed. S. Impellizzeri, 2 vols. (Milan, 1984), 1:110–12. 40 See G. Dennis, “Perils of the Deep,” in Novum Millennium. Studies in Byzantine History and Culture in Honor of Paul Speck, ed. C. Sode and S. Taka´cs (Aldershot, 2000), 65–74. 41 Ignatios Diakonos und die Vita des Hl. Gregorios Dekapolites, ed. G. Makris, ByzArch 17 (Stuttgart-Leipzig, 1997), chap. 12. 42 See Dennis, “Perils of the Deep,” 71–72. 43 F. Halkin, “La vie de s. Niphon, ermite au mont Athos (XIVe s.),” AB 58 (1940): 1–27, esp. 18. 44 Leonis imperatoris Tactica, ed. R. Va´ri, 2 vols. (Budapest, 1917–22), bks. 1–14, 38; complete in PG 107: 669–1120, Epil. 63: PG 107: 1089D. 45 I. Dujcˇev, “La chronique byzantine de l’an 811,” TM 1 (1965): 205–54, esp. 214.70–77. 46 Skazaniia o 42 amoriiskikh muchenikakh, ed. V. Vasil’evskii and P. Nikitin (St. Petersburg, 1905). 47 Theophanis Chronographia, ed. C. de Boor, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1883), A.M. 6303, p. 492. 36 37

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lery. An analysis of Komnenian battles shows that lances accounted for about twenty percent of the soldiers killed or incapacitated; since these were used primarily in the initial charge, it meant that one-fifth of the casualties fell in the first two or three minutes of battle.48 And once battle had been joined, death spared nobody. Nikephoros Ouranos pictures the moment of impact: “the kataphraktoi will smash in the heads and bodies of the enemy with their iron maces and sabers . . . and so completely destroy them.” 49 The chronicles abound in descriptions of swords cleaving skulls and chests skewered by lances. Moreover, one did not have to be struck by a weapon to perish on the battlefield. In 989, Bardas Phokas tried to rally his troops, but seized by a stroke of some sort, he fell off his horse dead.50 In the spring of 1086, the Domestic Pakourianos led a fierce and desperate charge against the Pechenegs and “slammed into an oak tree and died on the spot.” 51 Medieval military commanders usually aimed at the complete destruction of the enemy, that is, capturing or killing every one of them. The Byzantines, although engaging in their share of slaughter, took a different view. War was “the worst of evils,” and they resorted to it only when all other means of obtaining their objectives had been exhausted, and even then they tried to avoid a frontal assault.52 For the killing it entailed, even in a “just war,” was still evil—one need only recall the canon of St. Basil which refused communion for three years to soldiers who killed in battle.53 Unless the cause was clearly just, Leo VI decreed, Byzantine commanders were not to take up arms against other peoples and were not “to stain the ground with the blood of your own people or of the barbarians.” 54 The victories of Nikephoros Ouranos that most impressed his contemporaries were those achieved without bloodshed.55 When an officer urged that the Scythian prisoners be put to death, Alexios Komnenos reprimanded him: “Even though they are Scythians, still they are human beings.” 56 As with other peoples, capital punishment had its place in Byzantine life and was mandated or permitted for certain crimes.57 The historical sources describe a good number of public executions, sometimes in gruesome detail. Criminals and rebels were dispatched with the sword, hung on a forked pole or, on occasion, impaled. In 823, the rebel Thomas was paraded on an ass through the army with his hands and feet cut off.58 Three centuries later, the Bogomil leader Boris was burned at the stake, much to the 48 J. Birkenmeier, “Military Medicine and Injury in Byzantium,” in Textbook of Military Medicine, vol. 2, Military Medicine before the Modern Era (Washington, D.C., 2000). 49 E. McGeer, Sowing the Dragon’s Teeth. Byzantine Warfare in the Tenth Century (Washington, D.C., 1995), p. 128, 210–14. 50 Skylitzes, 337.12–30. 51 Alexiade, 6, 14, 3; vol. 2, p. 83, 9–12. 52 G. Dennis, Three Byzantine Military Treatises (Washington, D.C., 1985), 20–21. 53 Sainte Basile, Lettres, ed. Y. Courtonne, vol. 2 (Paris, 1961), ep. 188.13, p. 130. 54 Leo VI, Tactika, 2, 44–46. 55 Epistoliers byzantines du Xe sie`cle, ed. J. Darrouze`s (Paris, 1960), 258–59. 56 Alexiade, 8, 6, 1; vol. 2, p. 144, 15–17. 57 Murder, rape, incest, pederasty, robbery, arson, mutiny, treason, espionage, apostasy, magic, sorcery, ¨tungsdelikte im Reich der Ekloge Leons III. des Isauriers,” ZSavRom 74 heresy. See B. Singowitz, “Die To (1957): 319–36. 58 Skylitzes, 40, 57.

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delight of Anna Komnene.59 It must be said, however, that the Byzantine attitude toward the death penalty differed from other societies of the time and may well be of some relevance today. The Byzantines, so it seems, preferred to sentence a guilty person to exile or to confinement in a monastery or else to subject him to mutilation or blinding rather than put that person to death. Sometimes, of course, such punishments did result in death, but, cruel though they may have been, they did allow the condemned person time to repent and to serve as a cautionary example to those who might be thinking of crime or rebellion. About 821, Patriarch Nikephoros I called upon Emperor Michael II to execute Paulician sectaries, and the emperor then proceeded to behead vast numbers of them until compelled to stop because of the vehement protests of Theodore of Stoudios who argued that, if given time, they might return to orthodoxy.60 Michael Psellos praised Constantine X because in his nearly eight years as emperor (1059–67) no one was ever put to death, even for the most heinous crimes.61 It is recorded that throughout his much longer reign (1118–43) John Komnenos “deprived no one of life or inflicted bodily injury of any kind.” 62 This reluctance to take a person’s life, even when legally and morally permissible, is exceptional in the history of mankind and surely merits further study. For it was not until well into the second half of the twentieth century that such sentiments were forcefully expressed and received broad support. Emphasis on the Byzantine respect for life is one unexpected result of this cursory research on death. What about death itself? First, and perhaps merely parenthetically, we may note that the Byzantines never developed a cult of the dead, as did other peoples. Although they venerated relics of the saints and observed anniversaries of the departed, there was not that obsessive fascination with the material reminders of death that came into prominence in the West in the late Middle Ages and which in various forms have lasted into modern times: the “dance of death,” the representation and display of skeletons, and the observance of “days of the dead” by the graveside. The Byzantines would not have understood the American Halloween. How, then, may one articulate, even in a very general way, the Byzantine attitude toward death? Demetrios Kydones, continuing a millennial Greek philosophical tradition, composed a treatise to demonstrate that fear of death was not rational.63 The ordinary Byzantine came to somewhat the same conclusion on less theoretical grounds. Everyone was certain to meet with death. “Indeed,” Theodore of Stoudios wrote, “we will proceed along the same road which our parents have traveled before us.” 64 The only reason for fear was if one was not prepared. Death was not the end of life but a change of life. As life itself was a journey, so death was a journey. If you had packed the necessary provisions and if your documents were in order, then you had nothing to fear and you would arrive safely at your new destination. Washington, D.C. Alexiade, 15, 10; vol. 3, pp. 226–29. Theodore of Stoudios, epp. 94, 445; cf. P. Alexander, The Patriarch Nicephorus of Constantinople (Oxford, 1958), 99. 61 Chronography, 7a, 4, ed. Impellizzeri, 2:296. 62 Choniates, Historia, 47. 63 Demetrii Cydonii De contemnenda morte oratio, ed. H. Deckelmann (Leipzig, 1901). 64 Theodore of Stoudios, ep. 509.22–24. 59 60

This is an extract from:

Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No. 55 Editor: Alice-Mary Talbot Published by

Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection Washington, D.C. Issue year 2001 © 2002 Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University Washington, D.C. Printed in the United States of America

www.doaks.org/etexts.html

The Predetermination of Death: The Contribution of Anastasios of Sinai and Nikephoros Blemmydes to a Perennial Byzantine Problem JOSEPH A. MUNITIZ

ike most of us, the Byzantines were primarily interested in the individuality, the particularity of death, rather than in general theories about its overall nature. So they tended to ask, “When am I due to die?” or “How long have I got to live?” Again, what struck them as strange and puzzling was that they saw certain individuals who lived long lives and others who were cut off in their prime without any apparent moral reason (any sort of “poetic justice”) that would explain this. Even more striking and scandalous for them were the violent deaths that struck down some people, often apparently by pure accident—a wreck at sea or an earthquake—irrespective of their being young or old. How could one explain, or at least accept, such happenings as compatible with the existence of an all-knowing and all-powerful God?1 We can be certain that people were asking questions of this sort from one very clear source: Anastasios of Sinai, who deals with precisely these problems in his Questions and Answers, or Erotapokriseis. My aim in this paper is to outline how he handles these questions and to show how his treatment fits into the pattern of Byzantine thinking on such topics. However, right from the start one can say that the various questions about different sorts of death were dominated by one general problem: has God fixed in advance the day, the hour, and the moment at which one is to die? One’s first reaction may be to think that the question is a strange, and even morbid, one. But if one considers a little further one sees, first, that it is linked to the problem of fate and destiny—are we fated and destined to die at such and such a moment? (as Homer says of Achilles, “thereafter shall he suffer whatever Fate spun for him with her thread at his birth” 2)—but also that it is linked to the problem of God’s involvement in our salvation: does God predetermine particular persons to die while they are committing sin and so predetermine them to

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1 For more recent reflections on this perennial problem, see M. McCord Adams and R. Merrihew Adams, eds., The Problem of Evil (Oxford, 1990). 2 . . . u”steron au«ta ta` pei´setai a”ssa oiJ Ai«ssa / gignome´ nv ejpe´ nhse li´nv, o”te min te´ ke mh´ thr. Iliad 20, 127–28, ed. A. T. Murray, Loeb (London-Cambridge, Mass., 1925), 380–81.

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hell, or vice versa, does he predetermine the hour of death in such a way that they will go to heaven whether they want to or not? I shall concentrate on Anastasios of Sinai, partly because I have some familiarity with his writings as for several years I have been preparing a critical edition of his Questions and Answers, and partly because he happens to be an author particularly associated with the topic under discussion. Although there has been some excellent work done recently on editing his works, there is a lack of secondary studies on him. For most people he is at most a shadowy figure lost in the background, if indeed they have heard of him at all.3 He is a seventh-century writer, presumably at some stage a monk on Mount Sinai, where he may have held the rank of higoumenos. There are indications that he traveled quite widely—to Cyprus, the Dead Sea, Palestine, Syria, and Egypt; he was active as an orthodox controversialist in Alexandria between 650 and 700. Above all, he is the author of several influential works, notably the Hodegos, or Guidebook, some sermons, some stories, and the Erotapokriseis;4 a number of these works are preserved in many manuscripts, indicating that he was well known in the medieval period. Without going into great detail about the manuscript tradition, it is clear that the present edition of his Questions and Answers in Migne gives a very inadequate idea of the original work. When the seventeenth-century German Jesuit Jacobus Gretser came to prepare the edition, he had to rely on manuscripts that gave one of several later reworkings. Unfortunately very few adequate manuscripts exist of the original collection (and hence the time it is taking me to complete this edition).5 However, we can be certain that Anastasios’ own collection had a different numbering for the questions, and quite often significant textual differences. Thus for the topic before us the first text, Qu. 16, is in Migne (vol. 89) and is substantially the same as the text in the Appendix to this paper, except that in Migne it is numbered 88; the second text, Qu. 17, appears in Migne as Qu. 21, and in that version both an extra paragraph has been added and also a collection of four patristic texts. These additions teach that at the moment of death it is not unusual to have a glimpse of the future life in store for one: heaven or hell; this is another topic, somewhat tangential to the main issue, but to which I shall return later. First, a few remarks to help focus the problem in its specifically Byzantine form. In the West the topic usually appears categorized as the problem of “predestination” and is often identified with the doctrine of John Calvin, to the point that it may come as something of a surprise to find that the problem had been intriguing writers for many centuries before, in particular those writing in Greek. But the difference of approach is marked already by the choice of the term predetermination rather than predestination. The However, he is a familiar name to those acquainted with medieval Slavonic literature; a 9th-century translation of one version of his Erotapokriseis gained great popularity. 4 For a recent survey of the relevant literature, see J. A. Munitiz, “Anastasios of Sinai: Speaking and Writing to the People of God”, in Preacher and Audience: Studies in Early Christian and Byzantine Homiletics, ed. M. B. Cunningham and P. Allen (Leiden, 1998), 243–45. 5 There are many manuscripts with different versions of the Erotapokriseis. A list of those known to me is due to be published in a forthcoming issue of Moscovia, but since drawing up that list further manuscripts have come to my attention among the newly discovered fragments at St. Catherine’s monastery, Mount Sinai: MG 6 (9th century), M 139 (10th–11th century), and C 144 (A.D. 1312). Cf. JIera` monh` kai` ajrciepiskoph` Sina', Ta` ne´ a euJrh´ mata tou' Sina' (Athens, 1998), 142, 179, 212. This inventory was drawn up by Professor P. G. Nicolopoulos; it is not clear yet which version of the Erotapokriseis is included in each manuscript. 3

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Greek term most used by our writers is proorismo´ ", and they steer clear of any terms that may suggest “destiny” or “fate” (e.g., eiJmarme´ nh and ajna´ gkh); the reason is obvious: the latter set of terms have too obvious links with the ”Ellhne", the non-Christian Greeks or pagans. Historically it is most instructive to see how the problem of predestination or predetermination reaches back into both Old Testament and Hellenistic reflection,6 was a dominant preoccupation for the founding genii of much of patristic thought, both Greek (with Origen) and Latin (Augustine is the most obvious name), and continued to intrigue writers in both Greek and Latin, but also in Arabic (e.g., the early Islamic writers). Naturally there were areas in Europe and the Middle East where the question was discussed more thoroughly, and in different ways, but wherever groups of teachers and academics gathered, the question refused to go away, and the fundamental elements of the problem remained the same. If we try to enumerate what these elements are, we find that they fall into two categories: on the one hand, there is the commonly accepted teaching that God as all-powerful, pantodu´ namo", omnipotens, must empower everything; and moreover that God desires the good of all and is not subject to whims and caprice, but is to be identified with what we recognize to be ideals of justice and goodness; on the other hand, human freedom of choice must be given a place if some sort of moral system is to be defended. If we are not free to choose good or evil, then we are not responsible. So these two poles—God and the free human creature brought into being by him—are the two elements in the problem that somehow have to be balanced if any sort of rational behavior and belief is to be acceptable. At this point, we can turn from general considerations to concentrate on some texts. A good starting point is the following.7 Question 16 QUESTION There is another question after that one, which is universal: whether the life of anyone has a determined limit or not. Some say it has, others affirm it has not. ANSWER [1] Our reply to this is that the limit that exists for the life of each person is not a foreordained number of years, but the wish and ordinance of God, who transfers someone out of life when and how he commands. [2] In reply to those who argue by all possible means that a predetermination of God exists for the years of each person, we shall say this: God would then be found to be himself the one who makes wars, something that is too absurd even to be thought of. Again, supposing that predetermination for the years of everybody existed, fixed and immutable, nobody who is sick would call on the saints for their patronage, and indeed nobody would apply to doctors. For anything that God has predetermined will certainly come about. [3] However, another evil and Manichaean dogma is brought to birth from that supposition. What is it? That as God has foresight and foresees “everything before it come to be” [Daniel, Suz. 35a (LXX)], if he really “wanted everybody to be saved” [1 Tim. 2:4] and nobody to be destroyed, why, if he foresaw the apostasy of Julian the Apostate and the denial of Judas Iscariot, did he not rather predetermine and preordain for them a 6 Several Old Testament texts will be mentioned below; within the Hellenistic tradition one obvious figure is Alexander of Aphrodisias, who developed an Aristotelian argument against the Stoic defense of determinism. Cf. R. W. Sharples, Alexander of Aphrodisias On Fate (London, 1983). 7 The Greek versions are given in the Appendix; they are based on the new critical edition now in preparation, even if to simplify matters I have drastically curtailed the critical apparatus.

12

THE PREDETERMINATION OF DEATH more truncated life, allowing them to die and be saved before their destruction? Similarly in the case of any monk or upright person, who later falls away and is destroyed, the responsibility falls on God. So then one is obliged to say one of two things: either that God did not foresee, or if he did foresee, clearly he did not wish to save them but to destroy them. For had he wanted to save them, it was necessary for him to have predetermined the limits of their lives prior to their falling away. [4] Therefore, as I said earlier, it is best to say that the limit for each person’s life is the incomprehensible command of God. For if an immutable predetermination and limit concerning a person’s years had been fixed and established, how does the Apostle say to the Corinthians [1 Cor. 11:30] that it is because of their unworthy reception of communion that they fall ill and die? If a limit to life exists, then someone will not die before that for any reason whatsoever. Again, how did God say to Israel: “Guard my commandments so that you may become long living on the earth” [Exod. 20:12; Deut. 4:40, 5:16]? And again, Solomon said, “Do not become hard, and do not practice impiety at length, lest you die in a time that is not yours” [Eccles. 7:17]. Similarly he says that the curses of parents bring death to the children [Sir. 3:9]. [5] However, if God so pleases, we shall expound these matters at greater length in a separate treatise, explaining the many causes on account of which good people live short lives, whereas the wicked have long ones, and in what ways children die, and what is death for natural reasons, and what is a death brought about by God, and indeed why some persons die suddenly at table, or traveling, or while they happen to be in the bath, without any last will and testament, while others again, who propose to build holy churches or perform other useful works, depart to the Lord before their completion. For the time being we have given a short answer. [6] In reply to those who quote the great Basil as speaking of a predetermination of life, we shall say this: the predetermination of which this father spoke was the divine saying, “You are earth and to the earth you will return” [Gen. 3:19].

Several aspects of this answer deserve comment. (1) Concerning Anastasios himself, the author. One sees the very personal approach: “Some say this . . . some say that. But we say. . . .” Also remarkable is the colloquial style; it is as if Anastasios were talking with his questioner, and there are frequent traces of later Greek usage which are probably to be attributed to Anastasios himself and not to his scribes.8 At the same time there is the very practical, pastoral slant: it is the moral life of ordinary people, not just monks, that Anastasios has in mind. Quite clearly he is not a speculative thinker, and he writes in a rhetorical vein, intent on persuading with whatever means he has available, such as rhetorical questions (e.g., in §4). (2) Concerning the types of argument. There are three, though they are mixed up in Anastasios’ presentation: one is that predetermination would involve the conclusion that God directly wills evil (cf. §2 but especially §3); another is that our moral system would break down, because we would all become fatalists (§2); finally, there is the argument that predetermination would be irreconcilable with certain passages in scripture, where it is said that God can alter the hour of death, but how could he alter what he has previously determined (§4)? As Wolfgang Lackner has pointed out,9 Examples of peculiar forms are to be seen in lines 4–5 and 28 (cf. app. crit.), also the use of the indicative in line 15. 9 Ed. W. Lackner, Nikephoros Blemmydes: Gegen die Vorherbestimmung der Todesstunde, Corpus Philosophorum Medii Aevi, Philosophi Byzantini 2 (Athens-Leiden, 1985), LXXIV–V. He gives an outstanding introductory survey of the whole discussion in Byzantium, though deliberately omitting many of the earlier fathers; for these, see H.-D. Simonin, “Pre´destination: II. La pre´destination d’apre`s les pe`res grecs,” DTC 13 (Paris, 1935), 2815–32. 8

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none of these arguments holds water because defenders of predetermination accept human free will and argue that God’s foreknowledge and predetermination take this into account; similarly the scripture texts can be reconciled with either system. Anastasios seems to realize that it is not so much the predetermination that matters as the prior knowledge by the person concerned of the exact date. This may have led him to pose Question 17. Question 17 QUESTION Some say that if everybody were to know beforehand the days of their deaths, then everybody would repent. ANSWER If they were to know this beforehand, many strange things would be done. For anyone who had an enemy, knowing that the day of death had approached, would go out and kill that personal enemy, thinking, “Whether from God or from men, my own death has already come.” Again, anyone who foresaw by divine intervention that life was going to last for a hundred years would no longer bother about virtue and justice; rather this person having lived a profligate life, wallowing in sin, would start to repent a few days before the time of death. And what reward would be due to someone who lived as a slave of Satan all through life, and served God for only a few days out of necessity?

Once again, the practical, homely, pastoral approach is very evident. But again, one feels a disinclination to grapple with the deeper, philosophical problems. Anastasios seems to suppose that a moral system can stand only if buttressed by threats; there is no hint that goodness may have its own justification. There are various other occasions when Anastasios returns to the question of the predetermination of death. For example, the reference he makes in Qu. 16, at the start of §5, to “a separate treatise” in which he hopes to expound on these matters at greater length: the exact work has not been identified, and it is not clear if the treatise mentioned ever existed. However, among the Erotapokriseis there is one exceptionally long question, preserved in the printed edition as Qu. 96 (though probably numbered 28 in the original collection). It deals with the problem of random death—why some people die young and others in unexpected circumstances (by accident and so on): a characteristic Anastasian feature of it is the introduction of the theory of the four elements, developed in considerable detail as the scientific explanation of secondary causality (obviously following the common knowledge of his day). But the problem that soon arises in dealing with Anastasios is the existence of so many reworkings and adaptations of his Questions and Answers. Marcel Richard, who is the real pioneer of modern Anastasian studies, was convinced that the Pseudo-Athanasian “Questions ad Antiochum” also derive from Anastasios, but even among the pseudoAnastasian works one finds a question like that published by Cardinal Angelo Mai with the title de vitae termino, or Peri` o”rou zwh'" kai` qana´ tou,10 which is put together with extracts from the genuine Questions and Answers. I hope to include in the edition of the Erotapokriseis another version found in an eleventh-century Athos manuscript, Philotheou 52 (fols. 46–54); this is more important as it has been added to a small collection of genuine Anastasian questions. The question begins: ⬍Here is⬎ a great ⬍question⬎, much discussed and raised by almost everyone: do we claim that each human life has a definite limit (o”ron) or not? If it has such a limit, why 10

Ed. A. Mai, Scriptorum ueterum noua collectio, 1.1 (Rome, 1825), 369–71.

14

THE PREDETERMINATION OF DEATH does David say to God, “Do not take me away in the middle of my days” [Ps. 101:25], and again, “Those who commit deeds of blood and treachery will not fill out half their days” [Ps. 54:24]? But if there is no such limit, why again does the same David say: “Behold, you appoint my days measured out” [Ps. 38:6]? And again if there is a limit, why did Solomon say, “Do not become hard and do not practice impiety at length, that you may not die in a time that is not yours” [Eccles. 7:17]. Therefore, if it is possible to die “in a time that is not yours,” why did some people think they could teach that “Deaths are brought on when the limits of life have been fulfilled”? And why, when Hezekiah [2 Kings 20:6] and the Ninevites [ Jonas 3:9] asked for more life, did God add it for them?

And then the answer begins with a discussion of a Pauline text, and continues mainly trying to smooth out apparent contradictions between scripture texts; there are many similarities with Qu. 16, and the whole text may well be from the pen of Anastasios. There is much more that could be said on the confused manuscript tradition of Anastasios;11 however, for the purpose of this study I would like to place these early discussions in the context of later discussions. In particular I would like to turn to the treatise (available in an excellent new edition by Lackner) dedicated to this problem by the thirteenth-century monk and educationalist Nikephoros Blemmydes,12 the author of a summary of Aristotle’s logic and known in his day as an outstanding filo´ sofo". Although he is separated from Anastasios by nearly six centuries, we find him quoting Anastasios, and the conclusions he reaches are the same as those of Anastasios: there is no predetermination by God of the hour of death. But paradoxically in the intervening six-hundred years very important philosophical developments had taken place: the Neo-Platonists had been rediscovered, and in particular Pseudo-Dionysios and Proclus had been studied in depth. Moreover, a number of major theological writers had written in defense of the theory of God’s predetermination of the hour of death: starting with Patriarch Germanos I, and including such figures as John of Damascus, Michael Psellos, and Bishop Nicholas of Methone. The sort of considerations that convinced them were, first, a realization that divine knowledge and human knowledge cannot be put in the same category, one is outside time and indeed “super”-natural, the other limited by temporal sequence and, unlike divine knowledge, has no creative function; second, much reflection had been given to the notion of “limit” (o”ro", oJrismo´ ") and “limitlessness” (ajoristi´a), and their relation to the divine; third, it was recognized more and more that the interpretation of sacred scripture cannot be governed simply by literal criteria: pedagogical and allegorical intentions have to be borne in mind. It would be very strange if a person of Blemmydes’ intellectual curiosity and passion for reading had been unfamiliar with these developments. Indeed among his works there is a poem, made up of fifteen twelve-syllable lines, addressed to a Nicholas of Methone. 11 For example, Joseph Paramelle kindly supplied me with a partial copy of his transcript of Ambrosianus H 257 inf., fols. 1–14, which contains a florilegium of texts dealing with the predetermination of death; included among them are two texts attributed to Anastasios; the first, fol. 10r–v is a combination of Qu. 88 and part of Qu. 96, but attributed to Anastasios “of Antioch” (Qeoupo´ lew") and in a different version from both that edited in Migne and that found as Qu. 28 among the genuine Erotapokriseis; the second text, fols. 12r–13v, is Qu. 18, as published in Migne (differing from the corresponding Qu. 29 in the genuine work). The florilegium is anonymous and does not seem to be among the works mentioned by Lackner. 12 Lackner, Vorherbestimmung; page references are to this edition.

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When August Heisenberg first published this13 he was not aware that the manuscripts that have preserved it are those containing the anti-Latin works of Nicholas of Methone.14 Following indications given by an earlier editor, Constantine Simonides, Heisenberg suggested that the Nicholas in question was a thirteenth-century bishop of Methone. It is not surprising that Lackner wanted to support this view,15 as otherwise Blemmydes would be praising and promoting someone who held views diametrically opposed to his own. Nicholas of Methone, in his elaborate three-part treatise To Someone Asking if There Is a Limit to Life and Death, had given the most elaborate and sophisticated defense of predetermination produced in Byzantium up to that date. But it has been shown that the Simonides who first edited Nicholas of Methone was an enterprising forger, and there can be no serious doubt that the works against the Latins date from the twelfth-century author, and that there was no other.16 Why then did Blemmydes adopt the opposite view and argue against predetermination? As he summarizes at the end of the first part of his treatise, “learn from all of these ⬍quotations from the fathers⬎ the one simple lesson that there is no limit set for each person’s life, nor has death been predetermined for each person by God” (17.4–6). At one point I did ask myself how seriously one should take this work of Blemmydes: there are several passages in it where his biting irony and sarcasm are put on display, as when he presents an imaginary opponent as a pretentious ignoramus.17 Again, at the end of the second part of his treatise, he puts great stress on a council ruling that permits a traveler to bring his horse into the church for the night. Was this intended as a joke? Another possible clue to his motive may be the title he gives to his readers at the start of his treatise: he addresses them as w« filolo´ goi, “you lovers of literature.” Was he indulging in a rhetorical exercise? But if so, the first part, with its careful study of biblical and patristic texts, seems out of place. Lackner’s explanation for the treatise, and this is a view that I defended when I first gave a version of this paper, is that his primary concern is the defense of personal freedom: Blemmydes was a great individualist, prepared to stand up to patriarchs and emperors. But he was also primarily an educationalist: he felt it his duty to convince people of the key role of free choice. It is no good blaming others or fate or destiny: we can choose to do bad or to do good, and we have to answer for our choices. In other words, the surface question about the predetermination of the hour of death is seen to conceal another question: is a person really free in his moral choices? As Lackner expresses it: “Grundmotiv seiner Ablehnung des o”ro" zwh'" ist also die Sorge um die Willensfreiheit des Menschen” (“The fundamental motivation for his rejection of the predetermined limit to life is therefore his concern for human free will”).18 13

Ed. A. Heisenberg, Nicephori Blemmydae Curriculum Vitae et Carmina (Leipzig, 1896), 133, with comments

CVII–CVIII. 14 Ed. A. Angelou, Nicholas of Methone: Refutation of Proclus’ Elements of Theology, Corpus Philosphorum Medii Aevi, Philosophi Byzantini 1 (Athens-Leiden, 1984), XLV. 15 Lackner, Vorherbestimmung, LX n. 32. 16 Angelou, Nicholas of Methone, IX n. 2. 17 This occurs in the opening passage of the second part, but even in the first part the vocative, qaumasiw´ tate (16:25) is suspicious given its use elsewhere in an ironical sense (18:27, 21:14). 18 Lackner, Vorherbestimmung, XCIV.

16

THE PREDETERMINATION OF DEATH

But there is an important new element that I now think provides a key to the interpretation of Blemmydes’ work: the arrival of the Dominican friars in Constantinople around the year 1228.19 We know that as early as 1234 Blemmydes came into contact with Latin theologians, among them two French Dominicans.20 We also know that an anonymous Dominican wrote a Tractatus adversus errores Graecorum in Constantinople in 1252 in time for Thomas Aquinas to use it for his own Contra errores Graecorum, composed around 1263.21 The exact date of Blemmydes’ work is very uncertain. Lackner has suggested the period 1242–49: that was when Blemmydes was looking after another monastery while his own new foundation was being constructed.22 However, there was a second series of discussions with the Latins in the winter of 1249–50, just after Blemmydes’ transfer to his new monastery, and my preference would be for the 1250s as the most likely time for the compilation of this work, when he tells us that he took up various writing projects.23 It is true that Aquinas had not yet penned his treatment of the question, but among earlier Latin theologians, under the influence of Augustine, there was no division of opinion. For example, Gregory the Great, who must have known Greek from his time spent in Constantinople, had accepted that God’s preknowledge involved predetermination, while respecting the freedom of choice of the individual: in his lapidary phrases, “omnipotens deus iuxta singulorum merita disponit et terminum.” 24 It is quite likely that with the arrival of the Dominicans certain Greek scholars had already become acquainted with this line of thought, which Blemmydes stigmatizes as a dangerous innovation, to` n kaino` n tou' o”rou dogmatismo´ n (1.19); he proposes to answer the threat not with the help of “rhetorical techniques or philosophical sophistry”—thus rejecting any “scholastic” approach—but basing his argument on texts from the scriptures and church fathers. If one accepts this understanding of the genesis of Blemmydes’ treatise, some of the apparent paradoxes or contradictions disappear: Blemmydes and Nicholas of Methone were at one in their rejection of the Latin position on many points of dogma and liturgy; so Blemmydes could praise Nicholas for his anti-Latin works while quietly differing from him on his teaching concerning predetermination. Blemmydes himself was not prepared to allow any speculative treatment here, which ran the risk of bringing him too close to a Latin position. 19 Cf. R.-J. Loenertz, “Les ´etablissements dominicains de Pe´ra-Constantinople,” EO 34 (1935): 332–49, repr. in his Byzantina et Franco-Graeca, ST 118 (Rome, 1970). This was the year in which the Dominican General Chapter established the “Province of Greece,” with various houses in the Aegean and in Constantinople; ibid., 333–34 (repr., 211). The later influence of the Dominicans, especially through the work of Demetrios Kydones, is well known. Perhaps less well known is the Greek translation of part of the Speculum ´n Doctrinale of Vincent of Beauvais, published recently: I. Pe´rez Martı´n, “El Libro de Actor. Una traduccio bizantina del speculum doctrinale de Beauvais (Vat. gr. 12 y 1144),” REB 55 (1997): 81–136. 20 Ed. J. A. Munitiz, Nikephoros Blemmydes: A Partial Account, Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, Etudes et documents, fasc. 48 (Leuven, 1988), 106 n. 34. 21 This presentation of events (not accepted by all) was defended by A. Dondaine, “‘Contra Graecos’. Premiers ´ecrits pole´miques des Dominicains d’Orient,” AFP 21 (1951): 320–445, esp. 387–93. A certain Fre`re Barthe´lemy soon revised the original tractatus. 22 There may be a reference to the building process at the start of the treatise: Lackner, Vorherbestimmung, XXIX–XXX, but equally he may be saying that with the work behind him, he can turn to dealing with requests that he has had to put off. 23 Munitiz, Partial Account, 132–34. 24 Ed. M. Adriaen, Moralia in Iob, 16, 10, 7–10; CCSL 143A (Turnhout, 1979), 806. Lackner has collected this and other relevant texts in his introduction: Lackner, Vorherbestimmung, LI–LII.

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However, there was to be a further paradox in store in the final chapter of Byzantine reflection on this question. About two hundred years after Blemmydes, Patriarch Gennadios II, also known as George Scholarios, wrote five short treatises on the subject. In them he adopts a position clearly in favor of the predetermination theory. But the striking point, as Lackner has shown, is that Gennadios has taken over quite literally the teaching of Thomas Aquinas on predestination, so that one can trace the literal dependence,25 while still avoiding a term in Greek that might suggest “destiny” or “fate.” In conclusion, it is worth noting that in his fourth treatise on the question of the predetermination of death Gennadios strongly rejects the earlier treatment by Anastasios of Sinai, bluntly stating that Anastasios lacks the theological capacity required for discussing such a problem.26 This is clearly the reaction of a “professional” speculative theologian to one whose primary interest was pastoral, or even what we would call “spiritual,” in the sense of a spiritual director. I mentioned earlier the fascination that the Byzantines felt when they came across cases of holy men who were privileged to know beforehand when they or others were to die. There are of course a number of such cases in Byzantine hagiography, and, thanks to the Dumbarton Oaks hagiographic database project, it is fairly easy to track them down. Part of the fascination may be that in those cases the veil seemed to be lifted, and people were allowed glimpses into the working of the Divine Mind. Anastasios was not unaware of the phenomenon, and he has at least one story of a holy man predicting the death on campaign of a particularly obnoxious emperor, who had threatened to have him executed when he returned. However, he knew that these are, if anything, the exceptions that prove the rule: in general, it is better if we do not know; it is better if we believe that death hangs in the balance depending on how we live out our lives; it is better if we live as if everything depended on us, even though we may be certain that everything depends on God. Birmingham, U.K. Lackner, Vorherbestimmung, LXVII–LXXI. The theme had been studied in a wider context by G. Podskalsky, Theologie und Philosophie in Byzanz: Der Streit um die theologische Methodik in der spa¨tbyzantinischen Geistesgeschichte (14./15. Jh.), seine systematischen Grundlagen und seine historische Entwicklung (Munich, 1977), and in his earlier article, “Die Rezeption der thomistischen Theologie bei Gennadios II. Scholarios (ca. 1403–1472),” Theologie und Philosophie 49 (1974): 305–22. 26 It is clear that Gennadios is using a version of Anastasios equipped with florilegia, and therefore not the ´ sion de` to` n ajpo` original collection, but one of the more popular later versions; his exact words are: Anasta j Sina' a”gion me` n oujk a‘n ajrnhsai´meqa ei«nai . . . qeolo´ gon d∆ oujk a“n pote ojnoma´ saimen, oujde` toi'" qeolo´ goi" parako´v suna´ dei th'" oJmoi´a" e”xew" w“n. Gennade louqei'n gnhsi´w" duna´ menon, wJsau´ tw" de` kai` ei“ ti" tw'n uJste´ rwn Anastasi j `s, and M. Jugie (Paris, 1928), 440, 21–29; cf. Scholarius, Oeuvres comple`tes, vol. 1, ed. L. Petit, X. A. Sideride Lackner, Vorherbestimmung, LXXI. 25

Appendix

ANASTASIOS, QUESTION 16 (cf. QU. ED. 88, PG 89:713A11–716A15)

5

10

15

20

25

30

IS⬘ ERWTHSIS “Esti kai` e”teron meta` tou'to pagko´ smion zh´ thma, toute´ stin eij e“cei o”ron hJ zwh` tou' ajnqrw´ pou, h‘ ou“⭈ oiJ me` n ga´ r fasin e“cein, oiJ de` le´ gousin mh` e“cein. APOKRISIS (1) Pro` " tau'ta hJmei'" ejrou'men, o”ti o”ro" ejsti` panto` " ajnqrw´ pou ouj progegramme´ no" ti" ajriqmo` " ejtw'n, ajll∆ hJ boulh` kai` hJ pro´ staxi" tou' Qeou', o”te keleu´ ei kai` wJ" keleu´ ei metaste´ nonto" tou' bi´ou to` n a“nqrwpon. (2) Pro` " de` tou` " filoneikou'nta" ejk panto` " tro´ pou proorismo` n para` Qev' dei'xai ejtw'n panto` " ajnqrw´ pou, ejkei'no ejrou'men, o”ti euJreqh´ setai oJ Qeo` " kai` tou` " pole´ mou" aujto` " poiw'n, o”per a“topo´ n ejsti ka‘n ejnnoh'sai tou'to. Kai` pa´ lin, eij propephgme´ no" kai` ajmeta´ qeto" proorismo´ " ejsti tw'n eJka´ stou cro´ nwn, mhdei`" ajsqenw'n eij" ajnti´lhyin aJgi´ou" ejpikale´ shtai, mhdei`" loipo` n ijatrou` " proskale´ shtai⭈ wJ" ga` r prow´ risen oJ Qeo` " pa´ ntw" genh´ setai. (3) ”Omw" kai` e”teron do´ gma ponhro` n kai` Manicai¨ko` n ejnteu'qen hJmi'n ti´ktetai. Poi'on tou'to… ”Oti prognw´ sth" w‘n oJ Qeo´ ", proginw´ skwn ta` pa´ nta pri`n gene´ sew" aujtw'n, eij a“ra qe´ lei pa´ nta" ajnqrw´ pou" swqh'nai, kai` mhde´ na ajpole´ sqai, dia` ti´ proginw´ skwn th` n ajpostasi´an Ij oulianou' tou' paraba´ tou kai` th` n a“rnhsin Ij ou´ da tou' Ij skariw´ tou, mh` ma'llon kolobwte´ ran aujtoi'" prow´ rise kai` proe´ phxen zwh´ n, i”na pro` th'" eJautw'n ajpwlei´a" ajpoqano´ nte" ejsw´ qhsan… Kai` ejf∆ eJka´ stou de` monacou', h‘ kai` ajnqrw´ pou kalw'" e“conto", u”steron de` ejkpeso´ nto" kai` ajpolwlo´ to", pro` " Qeo` n hJ aijti´a ajnatre´ cei. Kai` ajna´ gkh loipo` n e’n ejk tw'n oJpote´ rwn eijpei'n, h‘ o”ti ouj proe´ gnw oJ Qeo´ ", h‘ eja` n proe´ gnw, eu“dhlon o”ti oujk hjboulh´ qh aujtou` " swqh'nai, ajlla` ajpole´ sqai. Eij ga` r swqh'nai hjbou´ leto, ejcrh'n aujto` n pro` tw'n ejkptw´ sewn tou` " o”rou" th'" zwh'" proori´sasqai. (4) Oujkou'n, wJ" proei'pon, kalw'" e“cei to` le´ gein o”ti o”ro" th'" eJka´ stou zwh'" ejstin hJ ajkata´ lhpto" ke´ leusi" tou' Qeou'. Eij de` proorismo´ " ti" kai` o”ro" th'" eJka´ stou zwh'" ajpara´ bato" tw'n ejtw'n tou' ajnqrw´ pou prope´ phktai kai` protetu´ pwtai, pw'" fhsin oJ jApo´ stolo" pro` " Korinqi´ou", o”ti dia` to` ajnaxi´w" aujtou` " koinwnei'n ajsqenou'si kai` teleutw'sin… Eij ga` r o”ro" zwh'" ejsti´n, oujk a‘n di∆ oiJandh´ pote aijti´an proteleuth´ sh a“nqrwpo". Pw'" de` pa´ lin fhsi`n oJ Qeo` " tv' Ij srah´ l⭈ Fu´ laxon ta` prosta´ gmata´ mou, i”na ge´ nh makrocro´ nio" ejpi` th'" gh'"… Kai` pa´ lin, oJ Solomw´ n fhsin⭈ Mh` gi´nou sklhro´ ", mhde` ajsebh` " ejpi` polu´ , i”na mh` ajpoqa´ nh" ejn ouj kairav' sou. W J sau´ tw" kai` ta` " kata´ ra" tw'n gone´ wn le´ gei ejpife´ resqai qa´ naton ejpi` te´ kna. (5) ”Omw" peri` tou´ twn platu´ teron, eij tv' Qev' fi´lon ejsti´n, ejn ijdi´a ejkqe´ meqa dhlou'nte" kai` plei´sta" aijti´a", di∆ a’" me` n di´kaioi ojligocronou'sin, aJmartwloi` de` polucro´ nioi gi´nontai, kai` ejk po´ swn tro´ pwn ta` nh´ pia teleutw'si, kai` poi'o´ " ejstin oJ ejk fu´ sew" qa´ nato", poi'o" de´ ejstin oJ ejk Qeou' ejpago´ meno", kai` ti´ dh´ pote oiJ me` n a“fnw ejn trape´ zh h‘ ejn oJdv' teleutw'sin, h‘ ejn balanei´v tugca´ nonte" a“fwnoi kai` ajdia´ qetoi teleutw'sin, kai` pa´ lin e”teroi naou` " eujsebei'" oijkodomei'n ejpiballo´ menoi, h‘ e”tera yucwfelh' e“rga, pro` th'" tou´ twn plhrw´ sew" pro` " Ku´ rion poreu´ ontai. Te´ w" de` peri` tou' zhtoume´ nou dia` brace´ wn eijrh´ kamen.

JOSEPH A. MUNITIZ 35

19

(6) Pro` " de` tou` " ajnqrw´ pou" tou` " le´ gonta" to` n me´ gan Basi´leion proorismo` n zwh'" le´ gonta, ejkei'no ejrou'men, o”ti proorismo` n oJ path` r ei«pe th` n qei´an ajpo´ fasin th` n le´ gousan, ”Oti gh' ei« kai` eij" gh'n ajpeleu´ sh.

QUESTION 16 Sources and Later References 3–10 source appears to be Leontios C’pl, Hom. 10, In Mesopentecosten, 343–70 [ed. Datema/ Allen, CCSG 17, 329–31, et cf. 306; ed. Combefis, PG 86.2:1988B–D] 6–10 used by Nikephoros Blemmydes, De vitae termino, ed. Lackner, Vorherbestimmung, 16 (19–24) 12 Dan. Suz. 35a (LXX), 42 (Theodotion) 12–13 1 Tim. 2:4; cf. 2 Peter 3:9 22–23 Cf. 1 Cor. 11:30 25 Exod. 20:12; Deut. 4:40, 5:16 25–26 Eccles. 7:17 26–27 Cf. Sir. 3:9 28–34 Cf. Qu. 28 (ed. Qu. 96); and the version in Philotheou, 52 35 Cf. Basil Caes., Quod Deus non est auctor malorum (CPG 2853), 3, PG 31:333B5–6 37 Gen. 3:19. Critical Apparatus (much abbreviated) P E / M a (a2 [Migne Qu. ed. 88 R] L) X G / P E (Escorial. 582, fols. 7–8v); G (Escorial. 582, fols. 69–70); L (Laurent. plut IV 16, fol. ⬍195v–196v⬎); M (Mosq., Bibl. Synod. 265, fols. 247–248); P (Paris. gr. 364, fols. 147v–149); P (Patmos 264, fols. 99–100v); R (Vat. Pii II gr. 11, fols. 185–186); X (Athen. 2492, fol. 3r–v). 4–5 metaste´ nonto"] accepi etsi tardivum cum PE, meta` se´ bonto" C, meta` semno´ thto" ML, meqistw'nto" P 7 metaste´ nonto" - a“nqrwpon] om. a2 7 kai` tou` " pole´ mou" aujto` " poiw'n] aujto` " loipo` n poiw'n (NOTA lege lei'pon, idem quod ejlleipe´ ", mancum, defectuosum) Migne. 9 ejpikale´ shtai] ejpikale´ setai Qu. ed. 88, ejpikalesa´ sqw Blemmydes | loipo` n] om. aX | ijhtrou` " C 9–10 mhdei`" - proskale´ shtai] om. (homoiotel. causa) PER (sed mhde` ijatrou` " proskale´ shtai add Pmg) 10 proskale´ shtai] metakalesa´ sqw Blemmydes 28 ejkqe´ meqa] PE, ejdida´ cqhmen M, didacqhso´ meqa Qu. ed. 88 R, ejpididacqhso´ meqa L, ejndidacqo´ meqa X, dialecqw'men G.

QUESTION 17

5

IZ⬘ ERWTHSIS Le´ gousi´ tine", o”ti eij proegi´nwskon oiJ a“nqrwpoi th` n hJme´ ran tou' qana´ tou aujtw'n, loipo` n h“mellon pa´ nte" metanoei'n. APOKRISIS Eij proegi´nwskon tou'to, polla` a“topa h“mellon diapra´ ttesqai. ”Ekasto" ga` r oJ e“cwn ejcqro´ n, ginw´ skwn o”ti h“dh h“ggiken hJ hJme´ ra tou' qana´ tou aujtou', ejporeu´ eto a‘n kai` ejqana´ tou to` n i“dion ejcqro´ n, logizo´ meno" o”ti ei“te uJpo` Qeou' ei“te uJpo` ajnqrw´ pwn h“dh h«lqe´ mou oJ qa´ nato". Pa´ lin de` oJ prognou` " uJpo` Qeou', o”ti eJkato` n e“th me´ llei zh'sai, oujke´ ti ajreth'" h‘ dikaiosu´ nh" ejfro´ ntizen, ajlla` pa'san aujtou' th` n zwh` n ejn ajswti´ai" w“n, kai` aJmarti´ai" kulio´ meno", pro` ojli´gwn hJmerw'n tou' qana´ tou metanoei'n h“rceto. Kai` poi´a loipo` n ca´ ri" tv' ajnqrw´ pv douleu'sai tv' Satana' o”lon to` n cro´ non th'" eJautou' zwh´ ", ojli´ga" de` hJme´ ra" ejx ajna´ gkh" douleu'sai tv' Qev'… Cf. Qu. ed. 21 (PG 89:532C3–D2); Ps.-Athanasios, QQ ad Antiochum 36 (PG 28:617C8–D6)

20

THE PREDETERMINATION OF DEATH QUESTION ADDED TO COLLECTIO B (PHILOTHEOU 52) Cf. Ps.-Athanasios, QQ ad Antiochum, Qu. 113 (PG 28:668A)

1

5

10

ERWTHSIS To` me´ ga kai` poluqru´ llhton kai` scedo` n para` pa´ ntwn zhtou´ menon⭈ o”ron qe´ lomen le´ gein e“cein th` n tou' ajnqrw´ pou zwh´ n, h‘ ou“… Eij me` n ga` r o”ro", pw'" fhsin oJ Daui÷d tv' Qev'⭈ Mh` ajnaga´ gh" me ejn hJmi´sei hJmerw'n mou, kai` pa´ lin, “Andre" aiJma´ twn kai` dolio´ thto", ouj mh` hJmiseu´ sousin ta` " hJme´ ra" aujtw'n… Eij de` oujk e“stin o”ro", pw'" pa´ lin oJ aujto` " le´ gei⭈ Ij dou` palaista` " e“qou ta` " hJme´ ra" mou… Eij de` pa´ lin o”ro" ejsti´, pw'" oJ Solomw` n ei«pen⭈ Mh` gi´nou sklhro` " mhde` ajsebh` " ejpipolu´ , i”na mh` ajpoqa´ nh" ejn ouj kairv' sou… Eij ou«n e“stin ejn ouj kairv' ajpoqanei'n, pw'" tisin e“doxe le´ gein, o”ti Qa´ natoi ejpa´ gontai tw'n o”rwn th'" zwh'" plhrwqe´ ntwn, Pw'" de` kai` tv' Ej zeki´a kai` toi'" Nineui?tai" zwh` n aijthsame´ noi", oJ Qeo` " ejprose´ qhken… APOKRISIS H J th'" sofi´a" mhgh` to` me´ ga docei'on th'" gnw´ sew", Pau'lo" oJ jApo´ stolo" pro` " Korinqi´ou" gra´ fwn le´ gei⭈ . . .

2–3 Ps. 101Ú25 3–4 Ps. 54Ú24 6 Ps. 38Ú6 5–6 Eyyles. 7Ú17 7 Yf. Basil. Yaes., Qqod Deqs non est aqytor malorqm (YPG 2853), 3, PG 31Ú333B5–9… yf. Qq. 16 ª48–50º 8 Yf. 4 Reg. (⫽ 2 Kings) 20Ú6, Ion. 3Ú9 9–10 2 Yor. 11Ú29–30… yf. Qq. 16 ª30–31º

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Funeral Rites according to the Byzantine Liturgical Sources ELENA VELKOVSKA

he end of life has always been frightening, in the past as well as today, but the attitude of modern society is to hide every sign of its presence or at least to make it less visible. There is no place for death in our culture, and we employ a careful process of linguistic cosmetics, filling our dictionaries with a plethora of euphemisms to avoid ever using the starkly unpleasant terms death and dying. This very societal discomfort may be responsible for the scant scholarly interest in the specific topic dealt with here and may be one of the reasons for the relatively small number of bibliographical references I am able to cite. How different from this modern aversion to death is the liturgy, where the themes of death and the hereafter are the subject of continuous, even everyday reflection. Probably because of its traditional and archaic nature, the liturgy preserves a surprising immediacy and clarity of language. This is equally true for both death and life, and some bold comparisons between the resurrection of Christ and the virility of the male sex could have been very embarrassing for a Victorian translator to render. Let us examine briefly how this liturgy of the dead evolved in Byzantium.

T

THE ANCIENT PERIOD (FOURTH–FIFTH CENTURIES) The original context of the official ecclesiastical prayers for the dead must be sought in the intercessions of the eucharistic anaphora, and this is true for the Byzantine church as well as for the Roman. Thus in the so-called Urtext of the Chrysostom anaphora, immediately after the epiklesis for the transformation of the gifts and the consequent eschatological transformation of the communicants, a commemoration of the dead is prescribed in these terms: “Moreover, we offer you this spiritual sacrifice for those who have gone to their rest in the faith: the fathers, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, preachers, evangelists, martyrs, confessors, ascetics, and for every just one rendered perfect in the faith.” 1 Note that this text does not envision any distinction between different categories of “saints,” that is, between what one might call saints officially “canonized” by the church and any 1 S. Parenti and E. Velkovska, eds., L’Eucologio Barberini gr. 336, BiblEphL, Subsidia 80 (Rome, 1995) (hereafter BAR), no. 36.1–3.

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other good and pious Orthodox Christian, the “every just” man of the Epistle to the Hebrews 12:3, which the anaphoral text cites.2 This eucharistic commemoration did not, however, by any means absolve the Christian community’s liturgical obligations with respect to the deceased. The Apostolic Constitutions (ca. 380), another source contemporary with the Chrysostom text and originating from the same region around Antioch, provides for the first time the wider liturgical context, including the chant of psalms and the celebration of the eucharist at the cemetery (VI, 30; VIII, 41);3 in addition, the same source has the departed commemorated on the third, ninth, and fortieth days after death (VIII, 42), in accordance with an ancient practice still observed in the Christian East.4 In the same fourth century, but in Egypt, the Euchology of Serapion of Thmuis has preserved the earliest extant Christian prayers for the dead in Greek, prayers containing the classical petition to give rest “in the bosom of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” 5 EUCHOLOGICAL REPERTORIES FROM THE BYZANTINE PERIPHERY The oldest Byzantine textual witness to funeral rites is the collection of prayers in the eighth-century Italo-Byzantine euchology Barberini gr. 336. As was usual in the redactional format of the ancient euchology, the prayers are simply listed one after another, numbered progressively, accompanied by a short lemma specifying their destination. The prayers of interest to us are numbered from 264 to 270 according to the modern numeration; in the original numbering they were 224 to 228, with an erroneous repetition of the last two numbers. Of the seven funerary prayers in this source, three are “for a dead person” in general (teleuth´ sa"), one is an “Inclination Prayer”—inclinatio capitis (kefaloklisi´a)—or concluding blessing over the bowed heads of the congregation, the sort of prayer commonly found at the end of a service or a section of a service; two are for the burial (ejpita´ fio") of a layman and a bishop, one is for a monk. At the end of the manuscript there is a diaconal litany for the dead (eij" koimhqe´ nta").6 Here are the incipits of these prayers: B1. Eujch` ejpi` teleuth´ santo"⭈ ÔO qeo` " tw'n pneuma´ twn kai` pa´ sh" sarko´ ", oJ to` n qa´ naton katargh´ saq" B2. Ku´ rie, Ku´ rie, hJ tw'n qlibome´ nwn paramuqi´a kai` tw'n penqou´ ntwn para´ klhsi" B3. Eujch` a“llh ejpi` teleuth´ santo"⭈ ÔO qeo` " hJmw'n, oJ qeo` " tou' sv´ zein, oJ dhmiourgo` " kai` swth` r kai` krith` " zw´ ntwn kai` nekrw'n R. F. Taft, “Praying to or for the Saints? A Note on the Sanctoral Intercessions/Commemorations in the ¨r Wilhelm Nyssen, ed. Anaphora,” in Ab Oriente et Occidente (Mt 8, 11). Kirche aus Ost und West. Gedenkschrift fu M. Schneider and W. Berschin (Erzabtei St. Ottilien, 1996), 439–55. 3 M. Metzger, ed., Les Constitutions Apostoliques, vol. 3, Books 7 and 8, SC 336 (Paris, 1987), 257–58, cf. also no. 278 of the introduction. 4 On the history of this practice, see G. Dagron, “Troisie`me, neuvie`me et quarantie`me jours dans la tradition byzantine. Temps chre´tien et anthropologie,” in Le temps chre´tien de la fin de l’antiquite´ au Moyen Age–IIIe– XIIIe s., Colloques internationaux du CNRS 604 (Paris, 1984), 419–30. 5 M. E. Johnson, ed., The Prayers of Sarapion of Thmuis. A Literary, Liturgical and Theological Analysis, OCA 249 (Rome, 1995), 68–69. 6 BAR, nos. 264–70, p. 287. 2

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B4. Eujch` a“llh ejpi` teleuth´ santo"⭈ ÔO ajgaqo` " kai` fila´ nqrwpo" qeo´ ", ajna´ pauson to` n dou'lon so´ n B5. Eujch` a“llh ejpita´ fio" kaqolikh´ ⭈ De´ spota oJ qeo` " tw'n pneuma´ twn kai` pa´ sh" sarko´ ", oJ didou` " katastolh` n do´ xh" ajnti` pneu´ mato" ajkhdi´a" B6. Eujch` ejpita´ fio" eij" ejpi´skopon⭈ Ku´ rie Ij hsou' Criste´ , oJ ajmno` " tou' qeou', oJ ai“rwn th` n aJmarti´an tou' ko´ smou B7. Eujch` eij" koimhqe´ nta monaco´ n⭈ De´ spota Ku´ rie oJ qeo´ ", oJ mo´ no" e“cwn ajqanasi´an, fw'" oijkw'n ajpro´ siton, oJ ajpoktei´nwn kai` zwopoiw'n The placement and order of the prayers in the manuscript provide no information about their distribution in an actual funeral rite. However, one can easily isolate an original group composed of the first and second prayers, the first an oration or “collect,” the second an “inclination prayer.” In the manuscript the fact that these two prayers come one after the other is not without reason, both logically and theologically. While the first prayer is destined for the dead, the second is an invocation for the mourners present, asking for relief of their pain at the loss of their loved one. From a structural point of view, the prayer of inclination (kefaloklisi´a) does not and cannot have an independent existence: being the concluding prayer of a celebration, it is always connected to some preceding prayer. This structure is very clear, for instance, in the Byzantine cathedral Liturgy of the Hours first witnessed to by the same euchology, Barberini gr. 336, which presents a complete series of prayers for the divine office. In this series the prayer of kefaloklisi´a is so closely connected to the previous prayer of ajpo´ lusi" or dismissal that it is grouped under the same number in the original numeration. The dismissal prayer asks help and divine mercy for each moment of the day, while the Prayer of Inclination (kefaloklisi´a) asks the divine blessing on those present. The parallel with the two prayers for the dead is then fully appropriate. Like the kefaloklisi´a prayer, the diaconal litany at the end of the codex cannot have an independent life but by its very nature must be connected functionally to a presidential prayer. So one could state that even without any direct information about the concrete course of the Byzantine funeral rite in the eighth century, it is possible to distinguish a complete liturgical structure comprising a litany followed by two prayers, the final one a prayer of inclination. This structure represents beyond doubt the original nucleus of the Byzantine funeral rite. But how old is it? Taken individually, some of these basic structural elements are clearly ancient. As has been demonstrated, the litany appears organized in a form very close to the postanaphoral litany of the eucharist described at the end of the fourth century by Theodore of Mopsuestia.7 The first oration of the series, “God of the spirits and of all flesh,” is also Cf. S. Parenti, “L’EKTENH della Liturgia di Crisostomo nell’eucologio St. Petersburg gr. 226 (X secolo),” in Euloghema. Studies in Honor of Robert Taft, Analecta Liturgica 17 ⫽ Studia Anselmiana 110 (Rome, 1993), 295–318, and R. F. Taft, A History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, vol. 5, The Precommunion Rites, OCA 261 (Rome, 2000), 59–66, 74ff, 155ff. 7

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found in the Armenian and Coptic traditions8 and seems to be very ancient, being attested as early as the famous papyrus of Nessana (ca. A.D. 600)9 and by a large number of epigrapha from the end of the seventh century on.10 A number of provincial Italo-Greek or Palestinian manuscripts datable between the tenth and the eleventh–twelfth centuries have euchological repertories similar to that of Barberini gr. 336, with prayers for other categories of dead. Among these one should cite at least the tenth-century euchology St. Petersburg gr. 226 (often called “of Porphyrius” because of its former owner, the Russian scholar Porphyrij Uspenskij). This manuscript gives these four prayers for the departed.11 P1. Eujch` eij" koimhqe´ nta" monacou` " kai` iJerei'"⭈ Eujcaristou'me´ n soi, Ku´ rie oJ qeo` " hJmw'n, o”ti sou mo´ nou to` zh'n ajqa´ naton J qeo` " oJ dunato´ ", oJ th' sofi´a sou kataskeua´ sa" P2. Eujch` eJte´ ra ejpi` teleuthsa´ ntwn⭈ O to` n a“nqrwpon J qeo` " tw'n pneuma´ twn kai` pa´ sh" sarko´ ", oJ to` n qa´ naP3. Eujch` eJte´ ra eij" koimhqe´ nta"⭈ O ton katargh´ sa" P4. Eujch` eJte´ ra eij" koimhqe´ nta"⭈ Ku´ rie, Ku´ rie, hJ tw'n qlibome´ nwn paramuqi´a kai` tw'n penqou´ ntwn para´ klhsi"12 The difference in these two ancient manuscripts, this one and the earlier Barberini codex, should not surprise us. One must not forget that each euchology is a very individualistic collection of texts, and no single book is ever complete, containing every possible ritual and prayer. So it is not at all improbable that some of the prayers of the later St. Petersburg gr. 226 were already used in the eighth century even if the Barberini manuscript does not have them. Proof of this working hypothesis is found in the manuscript Grottaferrata G.b. IV, a euchology belonging to the so-called Nilian school of copyists, which means that it was copied in the vicinity of Monte Cassino in the last quarter of the tenth century.13 In this manuscript, the structure litany–presidential prayer or collect–Inclination Prayer is reported in its entirety:

Diakonika` eij" koimhqe´ nta" . . . E j n eijrh´ nh tou' Kuri´ou dehqw'men . . . G1. O J qeo` " tw'n pneuma´ twn kai` pa´ sh" sarko´ ", oJ to` n qa´ naton katargh´ sa" 8 V. Bruni, I funerali di un sacerdote nel rito bizantino secondo gli eucologi manoscritti di lingua greca, Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, Collectio Minor 14 (Jerusalem, 1972), 158. 9 J. C. J. Kraemer, Excavations at Nessana, vol. 3 (Princeton, N.J., 1958), 310. 10 Bruni, I funerali di un sacerdote, 146–51. 11 Cf. A. Jacob, “L’ euchologe de Porphyre Uspenski. Cod. Leningr. gr. 226 (Xe sie`cle),” Le Muse´on 78 (1965): 199, nos. 217–20. 12 Cf. ibid. 13 Cf. S. Parenti, L’eucologio manoscritto G.b. IV (X sec.) della Biblioteca di Grottaferrata. Edizione, Excerpta ex Dissertatione ad Doctoratum (Rome, 1994).

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jAntilabou', sw'son, ejle´ hson . . . G2. Ku´ rie, Ku´ rie, hJ tw'n qlibome´ nwn paramuqi´a kai` tw'n penqou´ ntwn para´ klhsi" jAntilabou', sw'son, ejle´ hson. G3. O J qeo´ ", oJ didou` " pnoh` n pa´ sh sarki` kai` pa´ lin ajnalamba´ nwn ajpo` ko´ smou ta` " yuca` " ta` " ejpistrefou´ sa" ejpi` se´ G4. O J qeo` " hJmw'n, oJ qeo` " tou' sv´ zein, oJ dhmiourgo` " kai` swth` r kai` krith` " zw´ ntwn kai` nekrw'n G5. Eujch` ejpi` teleuth´ santo" nhpi´ou⭈ O J fula´ sswn ta` nh´ pia, Ku´ rie, ejn tv' paro´ nti bi´v14 The same phenomenon is found in the famous Slavonic Euchology of Sinai, Sinai glag. 37, the oldest Byzantine euchology in the Slavonic language, normally dated to the eleventh century. In the following list I give the incipits according to the corresponding Greek prayers. SL1. O J qeo` " tw'n pneuma´ twn kai` pa´ sh" sarko´ ", oJ to` n qa´ naton katargh´ sa" SL2. Ku´ rie, Ku´ rie, hJ tw'n qlibome´ nwn paramuqi´a kai` tw'n penqou´ twn para´ klhsi" SL3. De´ spota Ku´ rie oJ qeo´ ", oJ mo´ no" e“cwn ajqanasi´an, fw'" oijkw'n ajpro´ siton, oJ ajpoktei´nwn kai` zwopoiw'n SL4. Eujcaristou'me´ n soi, Ku´ rie oJ qeo` " hJmw'n, o”ti sou mo´ nou to` zh'n ajqa´ naton15 For the Middle East, one could mention the euchologies Sinai gr. 959 (11th century) (S1) and Sinai gr. 961 (11th–12th century) (S2), where the prayers appear as follows. Sinai gr. 959 (S1): J qeo` " tw'n pneuma´ twn kai` pa´ sh" sarko´ ", oJ to` n qa´ naton S11. Eujch` ejpi` teleuth´ santo"⭈ O ´ katarghsa" S12. Ku´ rie, Ku´ rie, hJ tw'n qlibome´ nwn paramuqi´a kai` tw'n penqou´ ntwn para´ klhsi" J me´ ga" ajrciereu` " oJ di´kaio", to` n meq∆ hJmw'n S13. Eujch` ejpi` teleuth´ santo" presbute´ rou⭈ O 16 soi douleu´ santa Ibid., 53–54, nos. 232–37. Sin. glag. 37, fols. 57r–58v; R. Nahtigal, ed., Euchologium Sinaiticum. Starocerkvenoslovanski Glagolski Spomenik, vol. 2, Tekst s komentarjem (Ljubljana, 1941–42), 143–48. 16 Sinai gr. 959, fols. 101v–103r ⫽ A. Dmitrievskii, Opisanie liturgicheskikh rukopisei khraniashchikhsia v bibliotekakh pravoslavnogo Vostoka, vol. 2, Eujcolo´ gia (Kiev, 1901; repr. Hildesheim, 1965), 57. 14 15

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S21. Eujch` ejpi` teleuth´ santo" iJere´ w" kai` monacou'⭈ Eujcaristou'me´ n soi, Ku´ rie oJ qeo` " hJmw'n, o”ti sou mo´ nou to` zh'n ajqa´ naton S22. Eujch` a“llh ejpi` teleuth´ santo"⭈ O J qeo` " tw'n pneuma´ twn kai` pa´ sh" sarko´ ", oJ to` n qa´ naton katargh´ sa" S23. Ku´ rie, Ku´ rie, hJ tw'n qlibome´ nwn paramuqi´a kai` tw'n penqou´ ntwn para´ klhsi" J didou` " pnoh` n pa´ sh sarki` kai` pa´ lin ajnalamba´ nwn S24. Eujch` a“llh ejpi` teleuth´ santo"⭈ O ajpo` ko´ smou ta` " yuca` " ejpistrefou´ sa" ejpi` se´ 17 These five collections, all younger than the Barberini, can be considered a faithful and representative reflection of the funeral euchology between the end of the tenth and the end of the eleventh century in southern Italy, the Middle East, and in Slavic Orthodoxy. Let us analyze the similarities and differences in these sources. 1. All of the manuscripts have in common two prayers: O J qeo` " tw'n pneuma´ twn kai` pa´ sh" sarko´ ", oJ to` n qa´ naton katargh´ sa" (God of the spirits and of all flesh . . . ) and the prayer Ku´ rie, Ku´ rie, hJ tw'n qlibome´ nwn paramuqi´a kai` tw'n penqou´ ntwn para´ klhsi" (Lord O Lord, consolation of the suffering and comfort of the mournful) (P3–4, G1–2, SL1–2, S11–2, S22–3 ⫽ B1–2), while the other prayers are grouped by categories of the dead. 2. Two manuscripts have in common the prayer for monks and/or priests: Eujcaristou'me´ n soi, Ku´ rie oJ qeo` " hJmw'n (We thank you, Lord our God) (P1, SL4, S21), not known to Barberini. 3. The prayer G4 corresponds to B3, SL3 to B7, and G3 to S24. 4. Three prayers remain without parallels elsewhere: P2 O J qeo` " oJ dunato´ ", oJ th' sofi´a sou kataskeua´ sa" to` n a“nqrwpon (O God almighty, who created man by your wisdom); the oration for children: G5 O J fula´ sswn ta` nh´ pia, Ku´ rie, ejn tv' paro´ nti bi´v (You who protect the children, Lord, in this life); and the third prayer, S13 Eujch` ejpi` teleuth´ santo" presbute´ rou⭈ O J me´ ga" ajrciereu` " oJ di´kaio", to` n meq∆ hJmw'n soi douleu´ santa (Prayer for a deceased priest: You the just, great high priest, him who has served you with us). Since the first pair of prayers is common to all sources examined, it must represent a universal common tradition that had spread everywhere. Besides, it should be noted that some manuscripts share some of the prayers, while others have in common some groups of prayers. Sometimes a dependence on Barberini is observed, while at other times new and independent euchological branches are constituted. All this seems to demonstrate a great redactional freedom. These discordant facts demand an overall interpretation, which will be possible only after we consider the information coming from the euchological tradition of Constantinople. 17

Sin. gr. 961 (11th–12th century), fols. 83r–85v ⫽ Dmitrievskii, Opisanie, 2:81.

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EUCHOLOGY REPERTORIES IN CONSTANTINOPLE The proper Constantinopolitan euchology tradition is known only from 1027 on, the date of this tradition’s first direct witness, the manuscript euchology Paris Coislin 213 written for Strategios, chaplain of the patriarchal oratories (eujkth´ ria). This, then, is our oldest and, for this period, unique source from the capital, and hence of singular importance for the history of its liturgy. Structurally the collection of prayers of the Paris euchology is in no way different from the similar and older collections of the Italo-Greek and Middle Eastern periphery. Here as there we find a series of prayers for different categories; here also the first place is occupied by the oration “God of the spirits and of all flesh” followed by the usual kefaloklisi´a prayer. But in the Coislin 213 collection there appears for the first time a prayer for censing the dead, hitherto unknown in the Byzantine funeral context. But in fact the inclusion of the prayers for the dead could be seen as a consequence of the composition of a generic prayer of incense.18 From the patristic literature, mainly the eastern writings, we find evidence of a constant link between funerals and incense. One reason for this is of course obvious: it was necessary to perfume the atmosphere in the presence of a decomposing cadaver. But there was more to it than this obvious banal motive. For the burning of incense provides the dead with spiritual benefit of the same sort as that achieved by the prayers and works of charity offered in their memory. Still today in the eucharistic liturgy, when the diptychs of the dead (now reduced only to their incipit, the ekphonesis commemorating the Mother of God) are proclaimed in a loud voice, the celebrant takes in his hands the smoking thurible (qumiath´ rion), then gives it to the deacon, who incenses around the altar on all four sides while commemorating the names of the dead in a low voice.19 With the Paris euchology Coislin 213 of 1027, we are finally able to make a comparison between the funeral euchology of Constantinople and that of the Byzantine periphery. Here are the prayers of Coislin 213. C1. Eujch` qumia´ mato" ejpi` kekoimhme´ nou⭈ O J w‘n kai` prow` n kai` diame´ nwn eij" tou` " aijw'na", Ku´ rie . . . C2. Eujch` ejpi` teleuth´ santo" kosmikou'⭈ O J qeo` " tw'n pneuma´ twn kai` pa´ sh" sarko´ ", oJ to` n qa´ naton katargh´ sa" kai` to` n dia´ bolon katapath´ sa" . . . C3. Eujch` ejpi` teleuth´ santo" eJte´ ra⭈ O J qeo` " oJ qeo` " hJmw'n, oJ dhmiourgo` " kai` swth` r tw'n aJpa´ ntwn kai` krith` " zw´ ntwn kai` nekrw'n . . . C4. Kai` tou' diako´ nou le´ gonto" “Ta` " kefala´ ",” ejpeu´ cetai oJ iJereu´ "⭈ Ku´ rie, Ku´ rie, hJ tw'n qlibome´ nwn paramuqi´a kai` tw'n penqou´ ntwn para´ klhsi" . . . J. Duncan, Coislin 213. Euchologe de la Grande Eglise. Dissertatio ad Lauream (Rome, 1983), 136. R. F. Taft, A History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, vol. 4: The Diptychs, OCA 238 (Rome, 1991), 10 and n. 40, 100–101. 18 19

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C5. Eujch` ejpi` teleuth´ santo" iJere´ w"⭈ Eujcaristou'me´ n soi, Ku´ rie oJ qeo` " hJmw'n, o”ti sou' mo´ nou ejsti to` zh'n ajqa´ naton . . . C6. Kai` tou' diako´ nou le´ gonto" “Ta` " kefala´ ",” ejpeu´ cetai oJ iJereu´ "⭈ Ku´ rie, Ku´ rie, hJ tw'n qlibome´ nwn paramuqi´a kai` tw'n penqou´ ntwn para´ klhsi" . . . J oi“khsin e“cwn to` n oujrano` n kai` pa´ nta ta` periC7. Eujch` eij" koimhqe´ nta dia´ konon⭈ O e´ pwn . . . C8. Eujch` a“llh ejpi` teleuth' kekoimhme´ nou⭈ Para` sou' kai` pro` " se` ta` pneu´ mata tw'n ejpegnwko´ twn se, de´ spota . . . J fula´ sswn ta` nh´ pia, Ku´ rie, ejn tv' paro´ nti bi´v . . . C9. Eujch` ejpi` teleuth' nhpi´ou⭈ O C10. Eujch` ejpi` teleuth' monacou'⭈ Ku´ rie oJ qeo` " hJmw'n, oJ ejn th' sofi´a sou pla´ sa" ejk gh'" to` n a“nqrwpon kai` pa´ lin aujto` n eij" gh'n ajpostre´ fein nomoqeth´ sa" . . . First, we find five orations common to both traditions, and so we can identify the Constantinopolitan euchology for the dead anterior to 1027 as containing certainly these five prayers: C2. Eujch` ejpi` teleuth´ santo" kosmikou'⭈ O J qeo` " tw'n pneuma´ twn kai` pa´ sh" sarko´ ", oJ to` n qa´ naton katargh´ sa" kai` to` n dia´ bolon katapath´ sao" . . . (⫽ B1 P3 G1 SL1 S11 S22) J qeo` " oJ qeo` " hJmw'n, oJ dhmiourgo` " kai` swth` r tw'n C3. Eujch` ejpi` teleuth´ santo" eJte´ ra⭈ O aJpa´ ntwn kai` krith` " zw´ ntwn kai` nekrw'n . . . (⫽ B3 G4) C4. Kai` tou' diako´ nou le´ gonto" “Ta` " kefala´ ",” ejpeu´ cetai oJ iJereu´ "⭈ Ku´ rie, Ku´ rie, hJ tw'n qlibome´ nwn paramuqi´a kai` tw'n penqou´ ntwn para´ klhsi" . . . (⫽ B2 P3 G2 SL2 S12 S23) C5. Eujch` ejpi` teleuth´ santo" iJere´ w"⭈ Eujcaristou'me´ n soi, Ku´ rie oJ qeo` " hJmw'n, o”ti sou' mo´ nou ejsti to` zh'n ajqa´ naton . . . (⫽ P1 SL4 S21) C6. ⫽ C4. J fula´ sswn ta` nh´ pia, Ku´ rie, ejn tv' paro´ nti bi´v (⫽ G5) C9. Eujch` ejpi` teleuth' nhpi´ou⭈ O These five prayers constitute, then, the Constantinopolitan nucleus of those prayers identified in the euchologies of the periphery already examined. Consequently, the first three of them (C2–4) can be dated to the second half of the eighth century, and the other two at least to the last quarter of the tenth century. A further comparison of the Constantinopolitan euchology with those of the periphery proves that in those later sources as early as the eighth century there were prayers for categories of the dead different from the ones in Coislin 213 in 1027, as well as the

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“other prayers”(a“llh, eJte´ ra eujch´ ) found earlier in Barberini as alternate texts for the same purpose. This is a phenomenon common to the whole Byzantine tradition, in which the euchologies of the periphery have conserved in Greek the prayer of the oriental patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, beyond the confines of the Great Church. Their orations had come to southern Italy by about the end of the seventh century, imported by the Melkite intellectual e´lite that emigrated into Sicily and Calabria under the pressure of the Islamic incursions in their homeland. In the Byzantine euchologies of the Middle East, the same prayers remain fixed as an expression of reaction against the process of liturgical Byzantinization, begun already in the ninth century, but unable in the centuries since to obliterate entirely the strong local tradition. In any case, it is important not to pay too much attention to the lemmata accompanying each prayer: they are often interchangeable. For example, the prayer for a dead bishop can be easily adapted for a hegumen. The euchological motifs are extremely archaic: we see them mirrored also in the famous western Requiem aeternam. Consequently they are also more or less fixed and follow the traditional themes revolving around the concepts of light, peace, rest, refreshment, and particularly of repose in the “bosom of Abraham,” in accord with the New Testament vision proper to Luke 16:22–23 and the Epistle to the Hebrews 4:10–11.20 Besides, the aim of the prayers for the dead is not to provide an articulated doctrine of the hereafter. Even if the liturgy is a locus theologicus, it tends to express itself in the imaginative and biblical categories of the symbolical language proper to it. The Constantinopolitan euchological tradition as reflected in Paris Coislin 213 is resumed in two archaizing euchologies of the fourteenth century, Grottaferrata G.b. I, called also “the patriarchal euchology of Bessarion,” and Athens Ethnike Bibliotheke 662. FUNERAL RITES IN BYZANTIUM: FACTS AND HYPOTHESES Those few liturgical sources proper to the Byzantine capital, such as the so-called Typikon of the Great Church21 and the above-mentioned euchology of Strategios (Paris Coislin 213, A.D. 1027), do not furnish sufficient evidence to reconstruct safely the funeral rites for the laity in Constantinople, or for that matter any of the funeral rites apart from those for monastics. The tenth-century Typikon of the Great Church gives only the list of the scriptural lections for the respective eucharistic celebration,22 and the euchology Coislin 213, as we have seen, provides no more than a series of prayers more or less similar to those found in Barberini gr. 336 two centuries earlier.23 The list of the lessons for the eucharistic liturgy does not allow us to infer the existence of a proper funeral 20 `re pour les morts,” in La An excellent analysis is found in B. Botte, “Les plus anciennes formules de prie maladie et la mort du chre´tien dans la Liturgie, BiblEphL, Subsidia 1 (Rome, 1975), 83–99. 21 J. Mateos, Le Typicon de la Grande Eglise. Ms. Saint-Croix no 40, Xe sie`cle, vol. 1, Le cycle des douze mois, OCA 165 (Rome, 1962); vol. 2, Le cycle des feˆtes mobiles, OCA 166 (Rome, 1963). 22 Mateos, Typicon, 2:194–97. 23 Described by Dmitrievskii, Opisanie, 2:1012–13. Prayer for a layman (⫽ BAR, no. 264) with one alternate prayer (⫽ BAR, no. 266), with Inclination Prayer or kephaloklisia (⫽ BAR, no. 265); for a priest, also followed by a kephaloklisia, for a deacon, for a dead person without other specification, for a child, for a monk, and a formula of anointing.

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mass, however. In fact, the Byzantine liturgical mentality, which attributes markedly festal character to the divine liturgy or eucharist, would automatically exclude such a possibility. The system is the same as in the Lenten period when the eucharistic celebration is permitted only on Saturday and Sunday, days not devoted to fasting and penitence. In light of all this, one should ask how the Christians of New Rome, already possessing a proper repertory of funeral prayers, used to celebrate funerals in the period prior to the first extant funeral ritual known to us. In this regard Miguel Arranz has proposed hypothetically the existence of a vigil-type funeral and has suggested identifying it with the pannychis or post-vespertine semi-vigil of the ancient Constantinopolitan Liturgy of the Hours. Following his hypothesis, Arranz seeks to trace in different ways the constitutive elements in either the manuscript tradition or in the contemporary rites.24 From one point of view, this vigil hypothesis is attractive, finding as it does some support in the patristic literature—one thinks immediately, for example, of Gregory of Nyssa’s moving description of the funeral vigil held for his sister St. Macrina (d. 379).25 On the other hand, an identification tout-court with the pannychis does not take account of the fact that the oldest full description we have of such a vigil goes back only to the eleventh century and is already markedly influenced by elements proper to the Liturgy of the Hours in the monastic tradition. Hence, in the absence of reliable scholarly studies on the structure of the Byzantine hours, one must avoid being seduced by attractive but unverifiable theorizing. The only absolutely secure evidence shows that between the eighth and tenth centuries we have no extant funeral rites, only funeral prayers, exactly as in the case of the mysteries of the anointing of the sick and confession; and that the earliest funeral rite, when one does appear, bears the stamp of monastic orthros or matins.26 Permit me to verify these assertions. THE OLDEST RITUAL The Byzantine euchology written in southern Italy, Grottaferrata G.b. X in the library of the Badia Greca of Grottaferrata, nestled for a millennium in the Castelli Romani just south of Rome, a manuscript datable to the tenth–eleventh century,27 must be considered the most ancient ritual for funerals known in the Byzantine liturgical tradition. The manuscript can be related by its writing to a Lombard cultural milieu, where a fitting parallel is found in the contemporary Vaticanus gr. 866, a monumental and famous ItaloGreek homiliary originating in Campania, the unique witness to the Greek translation of some Latin lives of the saints.28 In some of the margins of our Grottaferrata G.b. X there M. Arranz, “Les prie`res presbyte´rales de la ‘Pannychis’ de l’ancien Euchologe byzantin et la ‘Panikhida’ des de´funts, II,” OCP 41 (1975): 314–43 (repr. under the same title in La maladie et la mort du chre´tien [as above, note 20], 31–82). 25 Gre´goire de Nysse, Vie de Sainte Macrine, Introduction, texte critique, traduction, notes et index par P. Maraval, SC 178 (Paris, 1971), chaps. 22–24 (cf. also pp. 77–89 of the introduction). 26 ´a tou' mnhmosu´ nou, Kei´mena Leitourgikh'" 20 Of the same opinion is also I. M. Phountoules, Akolouqi j (Thessalonike, 1979). 27 A. Rocchi, Codices Cryptenses seu Abbatiae Cryptae Ferratae . . . (Tusculani [⫽ Grottaferrata], 1883), 262–63, and also S. Parenti, “La celebrazione delle Ore del Venerdı` Santo nell’eucologio G.b. X di Grottaferrata (X–XI sec.),” BollGrott, n.s., 44 (1990): 81–125. 28 Cf. the recent description of the manuscript by M. D’Agostino in Oriente Cristiano e Santita`. Figure e storie di santi fra Bisanzio e l’Occidente, ed. S. Gentile (Venice, 1998), 210–12 (with bibliography). 24

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appear notes written in the vernacular but employing the Greek alphabet.29 In fact, the codex came to Grottaferrata from the monastery of Carbone in the province of Potenza,30 that is, from a bilingual and indeed biritual territory, where in many cases direct influences of the Roman rite on the Byzantine ritual can be observed, as shall be demonstrated also with regard to funeral rites. Preliminary Remarks and Structural Characteristics The section related to the funeral rites in Grottaferrata G.b. X, which remains unpublished until now, occupies folios 77r–85r and is divided into two parts. The first (fols. 77r–83r) contains the ritual proper, while the second (fols. 83r–85r) provides a series of six prayers for different categories of the dead. The position this funeral ritual and prayer occupies in the euchology, coming between the marriage and the processional euchology, is rather unusual. Normally the funeral prayers are situated at the very end of the euchologies, immediately after the prayers for the sick and the exorcisms. The title of our rite is very simple: ajkolouqi´a eij" koimhqe´ nta (Ritual for the Dead). The initial rubric is of great interest: crh` ginw´ skein o”ti protiqeme´ nou tou' leiya´ nou me´ son th'" ejkklhsi´a", eij me´ n ejstin kosmiko´ ", a“rc(etai) oJ iJereu´ "⭈ Eujloghme´ nh hJ basilei´a, kai` le´ gei ta` eJxa´ yalma⭈ eij de´ ejstin monaco´ ", ouj le´ gei ta` eJxa´ yalma, ajlla` to` n ⬘ yalmo´ n⭈ O J katoikw'n (fol. 77r) (“One must know that while the dead one is lying in the middle of the church, if he is a layman, the priest starts with “Blessed be the Kingdom” and says the Hexapsalmos; if he is a monk, the priest does not say the Hexapsalmos but Psalm 90”). This means that, unlike late and modern practice, the euchology knows only one funeral ritual, with small variants depending on whether the deceased is a lay person or a monk, and does not provide a special ordo for priests. In the funeral rite of Grottaferrata G.b. X one can distinguish three different liturgical structures: (a) monastic matins of the Stoudite type; (b) a cathedral stational celebration; and (c) the funeral rites proper, organized as follows. Monastic Matins, the most extensive part of the celebration, comprises the following elements: Hexapsalmos (or Psalm 90, if the deceased is a monk) Litany ⫹ prayer Alleluia with troparia Psalm 118 Hymnographical canon after the 3d, 6th, and 9th odes: Litany ⫹ 3 different prayers Troparion-Exaposteilarion Lauds (Pss. 148–150) with respective hymnography Note that the very presence of the lauds psalms excludes the possibility that this celebration is only a kind of imitation of matins, as is common in the later Byzantine E.g., pe bbenedi´tzere kre´ a ka´ rne (fol. 90r), bbeneditzio´ nh dei´ beneditzeri´ pa´ nh (fol. 91r), la ratzho“ni di beneditzhri ouJba (fol. 93v), petrou bahmonte malfhta´ nou stourionne (fol. 98v). 30 M. Petta, “Codici del Monastero di S. Elia di Carbone conservati nella biblioteca dell’Abbazia di Grottaferrata,” VetChr 9 (1972): 160, 168. 29

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tradition, which models its occasional services on the structure of matins. In fact, we have here a real o“rqro" (matins) service, identical to that prescribed by the monastic typika for the Saturdays of Lent and for all the Saturdays not superseded by a feast of the liturgical year. For Saturdays were in fact traditionally dedicated to the commemoration of the dead, as we shall see. The litany is proper to the funeral service and comprises eight intentions incorporated into the common framework of the Byzantine synapte (fol. 77rv). The same litany is repeated after the 3d, 6th, and 9th odes of the hymnographical canon, but abbreviated in each of these repetitions to only five of the eight petitions, which is why this shortened form of the litany is called pente´ sticon.31 Note that Psalm 118 is said without the interruptions or divisions otherwise customary in orthros. The manuscript indicates exactly the minor hymnographical pieces to be sung, but does not mention any hymnographical canon, which constitutes the core of Byzantine matins. The reason is to be sought in the fact that the canon changed according to the social and ecclesiastical rank of the dead person—layman, ordained minister, child—and its respective texts were found in other liturgical books, not in the euchology. We have already seen the presidential prayers of the service in the above-mentioned early liturgical euchology manuscripts, which simply list them one after another with no indication of where or how they were inserted into the structure of the actual celebration. According to what criteria were they included in the ritual, and where were they located? In this first morning section, four prayers are to be said; I list them one after another in the order in which they occur in the manuscript. 1. O J qeo` " tw'n pneuma´ twn kai` pa´ sh" sarko´ ", oJ to` n qa´ naton katargh´ sa" kai` to` n dia´ bolon katapath´ sa" . . . (God of the spirits and of all flesh, who vanquished death and trampled the devil . . . ) 2. Ku´ rie, Ku´ rie, hJ tw'n qlibome´ nwn paramuqi´a kai` tw'n penqou´ ntwn para´ klhsi" . . . (O Lord, O Lord, consolation of the suffering and comfort of those who mourn . . . ) 3. Ku´ rie oJ qeo` " hJmw'n, oJ pla´ sa" to` n a“nqrwpon kat∆ eijko´ na sh´ n . . . (O Lord our God, who created humankind according to your image . . . ) 4. De´ spota oJ qeo` " tw'n pneuma´ twn kai` pa´ sh" sarko´ ", oJ didou` " katastolh` n do´ xh" ajnti` pneu´ mato" ajkhdi´a" . . . (O Master, God of the spirits and of all flesh, who gave the ornament of glory . . . ) Of these four prayers, three correspond to prayers 1, 2, and 5 of the Barberini Euchology. The third prayer seems to be proper to the tradition of the Italo-Greek schematologia, a Byzantine monastic liturgical manual containing the rites of monastic vesting and consecration, as well as the rites for the burial of a monk.32 This is an extremely important element for understanding the mechanism of the shape of the celebration in Grottaferrata G.b. X. The second prayer, used in the rite we are discussing as a dismissal or ajpo´ 31 32

Parenti, “La celebrazione,” 107–8. Cf., eg., Grottaferrata G.b. 43, fols. 157v–158v, Mess. gr. 172, fol. 111r.

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lusi" prayer after a group of odes of the hymnographical canon, is in fact a kefaloklisi´a or inclination prayer, a prayer meant by its very nature for the conclusion of a celebration. Several extant euchologies testify to this original destination of the prayer, putting it immediately after the first classical prayer, “God of the spirits and of all flesh.” Often it is introduced, as in the Barberini Euchology, by the usual diaconal invitation: Ta` " kefala` " hJmw'n ktl. (Let us bow our heads to the Lord). So it is obvious that the compiler has just distributed in the monastic matins suo loco the series of prayers contained in its model (a euchology), simply placing them one after another. Since there was no particular criterion for the distribution and the function of the single prayers, it is important to observe that the compiler was inspired by the same technique applied in the composition of the Liturgy of the Hours, where the prayers of the cathedral office were usually inserted into monastic vespers and matins to create the synthesis we know as the Stoudite-type office or akolouthia. So at the level of the euchology, the history of the funeral rite is no different from the general history of the Byzantine Liturgy of the Hours, particularly of matins. Besides, the compiler used the same method when organizing the solemn hours of Good Friday, harmonizing the euchology elements of the rite of Constantinople with the cathedral rite of Jerusalem.33 The Cathedral-Stational Celebration This second section of the celebration is undoubtedly the most interesting, comprising as it does three identical liturgical structures in the following way. I.

Psalm 22 ⫹ hymnography Litany ⫹ prayer Hymnography Epistle to the Romans

II. Psalm 23 ⫹ hymnography Litany ⫹ prayer Hymnography Epistle to the Corinthians III. Psalm 83 ⫹ hymnography Litany ⫹ prayer Hymnography Epistle to the Corinthians So there are three antiphonal psalms, each with a longer than usual hymnographical perisse, followed by a litany of the deacon accompanied by the customary presidential prayer, plus one hymnographical kathisma and a New Testament lection. The initial rubric makes it clear that this second section of the service represents a switch to a new celebrative typology: “and a chorostasimos is made: two choirs, and the right one begins with the 33

Parenti, “La celebrazione,” 101–7.

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first antiphon having as its refrain the triple Alleluia.” 34 Indeed, the language here seems more proper to the cathedral than to the monastic liturgy—but which cathedral liturgy? For such a liturgical unit constituting a particular and independent structure is found in none of the known types of Constantinopolitan celebration: neither the eucharist, nor the other sacramental mysteries, nor the cathedral or monastic hours yield such a structure. Of course one could suppose that a similar early structure of responsorial psalmody (psalm ⫹ Alleluia) and prayers was subsequently amplified by the inclusion of hymnographical elements according to the process of antiphonalization documented in the sixth–seventh centuries for the chants of the Byzantine ordo missae, a process that can be considered organic. Concerning the origins of the liturgical unit in question here, two hypotheses have been proposed. The first, formulated by Vitaliano Bruni, sees in the threefold group a possible imitation of the Jerusalem cathedral vigil, by analogy with the three-psalm structure of Kyrios polyeleos in Sunday matins.35 A second hypothesis, by Miguel Arranz, identifies in this group the psalms of the primitive Constantinopolitan funeral service, which was, according to him, nothing else than a pannychis or a partial post-vespertine vigil.36 Although very seductive as well as ingenious, Arranz’s proposal remains only a hypothesis because none of the sources, liturgical or extraliturgical, attest to such a practice. The first full description of a Constantinopolitan cathedral pannychis (vigil) goes back only to the eleventh century, the date of the Praxapostolos codex Dresden 104A, where we first see it. In this document, the pannychis is already a hybrid of both Byzantine and hagiopolite elements, rendering it difficult if not impossible to get behind it to the original structures. Is there any way out of the impasse? I believe that an element not yet given sufficient consideration by scholars calls for more attentive reflection: the presence of the scripture lessons. For a very close and, one hopes, appropriate parallel is offered by the celebrative structures of the Jerusalem cathedral liturgy, in particular its stational liturgy. A survival of this structure is preserved also in the present Byzantine-Palestinian synthesis in the first part of Good Friday matins. In this proposal, the three-psalm unit in question would represent but one more case of the frequently observable atrophy of a stational celebration. This proposal is not entirely gratuitous. For another celebration in the same euchology manuscript, this time of the Liturgy of the Word following the Apostle lesson in the third stational unit (III), must perforce be referred to the Jerusalem liturgical context proposed here. The schema of this parallel is as follows. (a) Mesodion (b) Epistle to the Thessalonians (c) Alleluia (d) Gospel (e) Ektene ´ ia kai` gi´netai corosta´ simo"⭈ du´ o coroi´, kai` a“rcetai oJ dexiw'n coro` " ajnti´fwnon a⬘⭈ uJpo´ yalma Allhlou j triplou'n (fol. 79v). 35 Bruni, I funerali di un sacerdote, 120. 36 Arranz, “Les prie`res presbyte´rales de la ‘Pannychis’ II,” 131. 34

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The hagiopolite provenance of this unit is betrayed unmistakably by the presence of the technical term mesodion, the Jerusalem term corresponding to the Byzantine prokeimenon.37 In the same euchology G.b. X the term mesodion is used exclusively in celebrations of hagiopolite provenance, such as the above-mentioned Great Hours of Good Friday.38 In any case, the secondary character of this unit of lessons is so obviously an erratic structure that its composition demands an explanation. The whole structure from (a) to (d) constitutes an easily recognizable liturgical unit that could have been the remnant of a proprium missae with a Byzantine ektene added. This could be an ulterior confirmation of the composite character of the celebration. The Farewell and Funeral Rites At this point, after the chant of a troparion ( O J rw'nte´ " me a“fwnon), perhaps only the first of a series, the manuscript inserts the farewell kiss of the deceased (aspasmos) by those present while the farewell chant, Deu'te teleutai'on ajspasmo´ n, is sung. The celebrant blesses the oil using the same formula as in the blessing of the prebaptismal anointing, with explicit reference to the earlier folia containing that formula in the Initiation rites.39 Note that nothing is said about where the celebration takes place, though the rubric implies that we are already at the tomb. This detail would confirm once again the processional-stational character of the above-mentioned psalms. While the body is laid in the tomb, a hymn (tropa´ rion) is sung which is in fact Psalm 117:19 with Psalm 131:14, concluding with a Marian refrain: Kai` ti´qetai tou' leiya´ nou [sic] eij" t(o` ) mnh'ma⭈ ya´ llo(men) to` trop(a´ rion) tou'ton [sic], h«c(o") b⬘⭈ jAnoi´xate´ moi pu´ l(a"), sti´c(o")⭈ Au”th hJ kata´ pausi´" mou, kai` le´ g(etai) to` aujto` trop(a´ rion), q(eotoki´on)⭈ Th` n pa'san.40 It is probable that we have here a direct influence of the Roman-German Pontifical, where we find this rubric: “Tunc incipiat cantor antiphonam: Aperite mihi portas iustitiae; ingressus in eas confitebor domino; haec porta domini, iusti intrabunt in eam. Ps. Confitemini [ . . . ] Hic claudant sepulchrum et cantent istam antiphonam: Haec requies mea in saeculum saeculi; hic habitabo quoniam elegi eam. Ps. Memento, domine.” 41 Such Roman-Byzantine contamination is not surprising, since it is not the only case in the manuscript.42 The celebrant then pours the blessed oil three times over the body of the deceased, singing Alleluia exactly as in the baptismal rites when, shortly before the immersion of the neophyte, the celebrant pours the oil into the baptismal font, chanting as well the Alleluia.43 In both cases the paschal symbolism, based on Romans 6:3–5, is obvious: the 37 S. Parenti, “Mesedi-Mesv´ dion,” Crossroad of Cultures: Studies in Liturgy and Patristics in Honor of Gabriele Winkler, ed. H.-J. Feulner, E. Velkovska, and R. F. Taft, OCA 260 (Rome, 2000), 543–55. 38 Parenti, “La celebrazione,” 92. 39 Grottaferrata G.b. X, fol. 82v: zh´ tei ojpi´sw [fol. 49r], eij" to` a”gion ba´ ptisma, ejkei' ejgra´ fh. 40 Grottaferrata G.b. X, fol. 82v. 41 C. Vogel and R. Elze, Le pontifical romano-germanique du dixie`me sie`cle, vol. 2, ST 227 (Vatican City, 1963), p. 300 no. 61, p. 302 no. 69. 42 Cf. A. Strittmatter, “The Latin Prayer ‘Ad infantes Consignandos’ in the Byzantine Rite of Confirmation,” OCP 21 (1955): 308–20. 43 BAR, 124.3.

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tomb, like the baptismal font, is the place of death—but at the same time the place of resurrection.44 Then prayers are offered for those present, and after putting the gravestone over the tomb, the celebrant blesses it, tracing out the sign of the cross with a hoe, and thus the funeral concludes. A series of prayers for different categories of the dead (hegumen, bishop, monk, deacon, child) follows; these prayers, together with the hymnography (which one would have expected to find but which is not given), seem to be the only variable elements of the celebration. THE FUNERAL OF A MONK IN THE SCHEMATOLOGIA As early as the eighth-century Barberini Euchology, one can observe how the euchology redactional structure placed the prayers for the deceased immediately following those for the various grades of monastic initiation.45 This redactional relationship would continue through the centuries in the Schematologion, a book containing almost exclusively not just the prayers but the entire ritual for the conferral of the monastic schema or habit, as well as for the funeral of a monk. The manuscript tradition of this book is extensive, stretching from the eleventh through the sixteenth century.46 The following are some of its more significant examples. Grottaferrata G.b. V/G.a. XXV The oldest extant source seems to be the Italo-Greek manuscript Grottaferrata G.b. V and G.a. XXV (A.D. 1018/19), unfortunately badly damaged. The funeral rite here is analogous to that of the tradition of Grottaferrata G.b. X, deriving, like the latter, from the so-called Nilian school of scribes.47 Despite differences, the basic similarity of the two sources consists in the fact that the funeral rite, though accompanied by a ritual of monastic profession, is not destined for the funeral of a monk—at least not necessarily so— but for any deceased Orthodox Christian. This is clear from the rich anthology of hymnographical canons following the rite proper, where compositions certainly meant for monks, nuns, and the hegumen48 are juxtaposed with others for lay persons or children (fols. 7r–46v); the last ones are also put side by side with the respective presidential prayers (fols. 35v–36r). The Nilian provenance of this source is also betrayed by the already-mentioned telltale rubric derived from the Roman-Germanic sacramentary. G. Winkler, Das armenische Initiationsrituale. Entwicklungsgeschichtliche und liturgievergleichende Untersuchung der Quellen des 3. bis 10. Jahrhunderts, OCA 217 (Rome, 1982). 45 BAR, nos. 244–56, 258–63 (monastic initiation), nos. 264–70 (funerals). 46 Examples in M. Wawryk, Initiatio monastica in liturgia byzantina. Officiorum schematis magni et parvi necnon rasophoratus exordia et evolutio, OCA 180 (Rome, 1968), and Bruni, I funerali di un sacerdote, 43–79, passim. 47 S. Luca`, “Attivita` scrittoria e culturale a Rossano: Da S. Nilo a S. Bartolomeo da Simeri (secoli X–XII),” in Atti del Congresso internazionale su S. Nilo di Rossano, 28 settembre–1 ottobre 1986 (Rossano-Grottaferrata, 1989), 25–73, esp. 28 n. 12 and 63 n. 169. 48 Some of them published by M. Arco Magrı`, “L’inedito canon de requie di Andrea Cretese,” Helikon 9–10 (1969–70): 475–76; eadem, Clemente innografo e gli inediti canoni cerimoniali (Rome, 1979), 45, 55, 66; Romanos le Me´lode, Hymnes, Introduction, texte critique, traduction et notes par. J. Grosdidier de Matons, vol. 5, Nouveau Testament (XLVI–L) et hymnes de circonstance (LI–LVI), SC 283 (Paris, 1981), 8, 375. 44

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Kai` o”tan te´ qoun to` lei´yanon eij" to` n ta´ fon ya´ llei oJ l(ao´ ")⭈ ajnoi´xate´ moi pu´ la" dikaiosu´ nh"⭈ i”na eijselqw' ejn aujtai'", proskunh´ sw ku´ rion to` n Qeo´ n. Kai` le´ gei sti´co"⭈ Au”th hJ kata´ pausi´" mou, kai` pa´ lin to` aujto´ ⭈ ajnoi´xate´ moi pu´ la", kai` doxa´ zei kai` le´ gei⭈ O J pisteu´ wn eij" pate´ ra . . . 49 (Ps. 117:19; Ps. 131:14) And while the body is laid in the tomb, the deacon sings: Open to me the doors of justice to enter and adore, Lord. And he says the verse: This is my rest . . . ; and again the same: Open to me the doors . . . then he says Glory . . . , and: One who believes in the Father . . .

The Romano-Germanic provenance of this rubric is in fact the most interesting point of comparison with the euchology Grottaferrata G.b. X. For the Greek translations offered by the two Nilian manuscripts are not identical, an indication that in the same area of provenance of both manuscripts, imitation of Latin usages was a spontaneous practice. In this instance the differences in the Greek text are explained by the presence of two different Latin recensions of the same rite, and is not the result of diffusion and redactional development within the same Greek translation tradition. So we can take the Nilian schematologion as representing a not-yet-mature witness of the formation of this type of book, one in which the deceased are not yet divided into clear and distinct categories with regard to the order of the funeral celebration. Grottaferrata G.b. XLIII We must locate in the same eleventh century, and in an area of southern Italy where the Latin and Greek liturgical cultures were apparently not in contact, the formation of a special, exclusively monastic funeral rite, of which the Ta´ xi" kai` ajkolouqi´a ginom(e´ nh) ejpi` teleuth´ (santo") monacou' of Grottaferrata G.b. XLIII (fols. 108 ff) provides a good example. This certainly Italo-Greek manuscript, difficult to locate more precisely, was written by two copyists of high professional standard inspired by the decorative models of the so-called blue style.50 Its funeral celebration can be divided into three parts: (a) in the cell, the washing and dressing of the body; (b) in the church, the funeral service; and (c) at the cemetery, the burial. All three ritual moments are linked by respective processions. The rubrics have become very detailed: the monk is washed from the knees down and on the head, then dressed in the monastic habit covered with a shroud, and borne into the church. If the dead monk is a hegumen, priest, or deacon, he is laid in front of the altar, and the Gospel book is placed on his chest. If the deceased is a lay monk, he is placed on the right side of the church, if a woman, on the left side. If a monk dies during the night, the watch by his body consists in the kanw´ n of matins, followed by prime, and only then the funeral, ta` th'" khdi´a". If a monk dies during the day or in the afternoon, vespers are celebrated for him somewhat earlier than usual, followed by the funeral (khdeu´ etai). So the funeral rite (khdi´a) is a liturgical unity that accompanies but is distinct from the Liturgy of the Hours. Its proper elements are Psalm 118 divided into three sections with a presidential prayer after each, followed by Psalms 22, 23, and 114, a rich selection of hymnographical compositions, the celebration of the Word, the anointing with mu´ ron, and the farewell greeting. Then a procession chanting the Trisagion hymn proceeds to the tomb, where 49 50

Grottaferrata G.a. XXV, fol. 5v. Cf. L. Perria, “Manoscritti miniati in ‘stile blu’ nei secoli X–XI,” RSBN 24 (1987): 121.

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some prayers are said and Ezechiel 37:1–14, a lesson proper to Holy Saturday matins, is read. The choice of this reading shows a clear association of the burial of a Christian with that of Christ. An appendix gives a selection of scripture lessons for the eucharistic liturgy and an anthology of hymnographical compositions.51 The presence of the group of Psalms 22, 23, and 114 is an element common to the above-mentioned euchology Grottaferrata G.b. X. But here the three psalms are said one after another without the presidential prayers, which are distributed at the end of the sections of Psalm 118, an element that will tend more and more to comprise the core of the funeral. Messina gr. 172 Messina gr. 172, a rich and elegant schematologion written in 1178–79 in the Reggio style, gives three different funeral rites: for monks, for the faithful departed in general, and for children. The manuscript is thus one of the first known witnesses to funeral rites constituted according to different categories of the deceased. MONASTIC FUNERALS The monastic rite (Ta´ xi" kai` ajkolouqi´a ginome´ nh ejpi` teleuthko´ ti monacv') begins with a minutely detailed description of the dressing of the monk in his cell, stressing that it is not permitted to see his nakedness (fol. 92v). The celebrant then opens the service, as customary, with a blessing (eujloghto` " oJ qeo` " hJmw'n oJ zw´ ntwn kai` nekrw'n ejxousia´ zwn, pa´ ntote nu'n kai` ajei` ktl.); then, to the singing of the Trisagion hymn, the traditional Byzantine funeral dirge, the coffin is borne in procession to the narthex where the funeral takes place. The first part of the funeral rite resumes the structure already seen: Litany Alleluia with troparia Psalm 118:1–93 Litany with the usual prayer Psalm 118:94–176 Troparia anastasima Litany and prayer After this unit a second one follows containing these elements: Psalm 119 ⫹ hymnographical kathisma Litany and prayer Psalm 120 ⫹ hymnographical kathisma Litany and prayer Some of them published by M. Arco Magrı`, “L’inedito canon de requie,” 475–76; eadem, “Un canone inedito di Teodoro Studita nel cod. Messanensis gr. 153,” in Umanita` e Storia, vol. 2, Scritti in onore di A. Attisani (Naples, 1971), 97; eadem, Clemente innografo e gli inediti canoni cerimoniali. Prolegomeni, testo, incipitario, Biblioteca di Helikon - Studi e Testi 12 (Rome, 1979). 51

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Makarismoi Hymnographical canon of eight odes Litany and prayer after the third and sixth odes Epistle and Gospel Litany and prayer To interpret this structure is not at all easy. Psalms 119 and 120 belong to the group called the “Gradual Psalms” (Pss. 119–132), the ajnabaqmoi´. The same name is also given to a series of hymns composed according to the eight tones and formerly intercalated between the verses of the psalms. These hymns, on which there are still no reliable scholarly studies, are now sung before the Gospel at Sunday and festive matins. In the context of the cathedral Liturgy of the Hours, the first three gradual psalms (Pss. 119–121) were sung at the vigil (pannuci´") according to such sources as the praxapostolos Dresden 104 (11th century),52 Jerusalem Hagios Stauros 43 (A.D. 1122),53 and the later Greek witnesses.54 In a few late Georgian manuscripts this vigil structure, taken out of its celebrative context, is used as a votive rite for the living and dead.55 At first sight the presence of the two gradual psalms could be interpreted as a remnant of the Constantinopolitan-type cathedral vigil, thus supporting the hypothesis of a dependence of the funeral on the pannychis. But a more attentive analysis leads us right back to monastic matins. For in many hymnographical manuscripts from the tenth century on, contrary to present practice, the festal Gospel is read within the hymnographical canon, in the following way: Sixth ode of the canon Kontakion Antiphons and gradual psalms Prokeimenon Gospel Makarismoi So our schematologion does not point to the origin of the funeral from the cathedral vigil. Rather, it demonstrates the evolution of the displacement of the Gospel within the history of monastic matins, the stages of which are reflected in the funeral rites. POSTMORTEM RITES OF SUFFRAGE FOR THE SOULS OF THE DEAD AND PRIVATE COMMEMORATIONS Beyond the funeral burial rites, in Byzantine society the anniversary of the death of a person, especially an important person, also furnished an occasion for the “liturgicization” of social life. The Byzantine mentality had inherited the Greco-Roman notion of the progressive stages of the separation of the soul from the body on the third, ninth, 52 M. Arranz, “Les prie`res presbyte´rales de la ‘Pannychis’ de l’ancien Euchologe byzantin et la ‘Panikhida’ des de´funts, I,” OCP 40 (1974): 336–38. 53 Ibid., 339–40. 54 Ibid., 340. 55 Arranz, “Les prie`res presbyte´rales de la ‘Pannychis’ II,” 124–27.

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and fortieth days after death.56 These days become, then, occasions to guarantee the church’s suffrages for the dead according to a practice in use until now. The corresponding celebration, now called trisa´ gion nekrw´ simon or tw'n kekoimhme´ nwn or simply trisa´ gion,57 has a very simple structure, composed as follows: (a) Initial blessing (b) Trisagion—Our Father (c) Funeral troparia: Meta` pneuma´ twn dikai´wn . . . Eij" th` n kata´ pausi´n sou . . . Su` e« oJ qeo` " hJmw'n oJ kataba´ " . . . H J mo´ nh aJgnh` kai` a“cranto" . . . (d) Litany (e) Presidential prayer (f) Dismissal (g) Chant “Eternal memory” The first witness to this short rite, from the second half of the twelfth century, is the ´a ejpi` teleuth´ santo") of the Middle Eastern euchology “Rite for the Deceased” (Akolouqi j Sinai gr. 973 (A.D. 1152/53), where the rite comprises only [a], b, d, and e.58 Another rite, almost identical with the modern one, is found in an appendix to the typikon (ritual) of the Italo-Greek monastery of Casole near Otranto, preserved in the manuscript C III 17 of the National Library of Turin (fol. 178v), dated 1173.59 A more developed rite is given by the euchology Ottoboni gr. 344, written in 1177 by Galaktion, priest and second singer of the cathedral of Otranto. This source has the particularity of using a prayer from the fourth-century Apostolic Constitutions (Syria, ca. 380) in the same way as another Salentan euchology, the Barberini gr. 434 (13th century);60 the Salentan suffrage rites are found also in Vaticanus gr. 2296 (15th century).61 Byzantium also gave particular importance to suffrages for the founders of a monastery, especially when the founder was the emperor or a member of his family. The typika provided the most minute details for the celebration of different commemorations (mnhmo´ suna). The twelfth-century typikon of the monastery of the Savior Pantokrator furnishes a good example of this.62 To the same category of suffrages and commemorations belong the intercessions said by the priest during the anaphora, and the accompanying diptychs proclaimed by the deacon, on which the basic study has been written by Robert Taft.63

Dagron, “Troisie`me, neuvie`me et quarantie`me jours,” 419–30. ´a" tou' JEsperinou' kai` tou' “Orqrou, ta` " qei´a" kai` iJera` " Leitourgi´a" E.g., JIeratiko` n perie´ con ta` " Akolouqi j jIwa´ nnou tou' Crusosto´ mou, Basilei´ou tou' Mega´ lou kai` tw'n Prohgiasme´ nwn, meta` tw'n sunh´ qwn prosqhkw'n (Rome, 1950), 291–94. 58 Published by Dmitrievskii, Opisanie, 2:110. 59 J. M. Hoeck and R. J. Loenertz, Nikolaos-Nektarios von Otranto Abt von Casole. Beitra¨ge zur Geschichte der ostwestlichen Beziehungen unter Innozenz III. und Friedrich II., StPB 11 (Ettal, 1965), 10. 60 S. Parenti, “Preghiere delle ‘Costituzioni Apostoliche’ in alcuni eucologi italo-greci del medioevo,” EphL 113 (1999): 47–52. 61 A. Jacob, “Fragments liturgiques byzantins de Terre d’Otrante,” Bulletin de l’Institut Historique Belge de Rome 43 (1973): 370–73. 62 P. Gautier, “Le Typikon du Christ Sauveur Pantokrator,” REB 32 (1974): 32–35. 63 Taft, Diptychs (as above, note 19), 140–42. 56 57

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DAILY, WEEKLY, AND YEARLY GENERAL COMMEMORATIONS OF THE DEPARTED The departed were also remembered regularly on a daily, weekly, and yearly basis. In today’s liturgical year one can distinguish a weekday cycle organized around a series of commemorations for every day of the week. Each day is dedicated to one or more saints, who are celebrated with the respective hymnography of canons and stichera called, precisely, nekrw´ sima. The elaboration of this cycle is rightly attributed to the ninth-century hymnographers Joseph and Theophanes. But some traces are already found in the Palestinian horologion or book of hours Sinai gr. 863, a ninth-century manuscript reporting a text that may be still earlier. In this source, Monday and Tuesday are considered days of penitence, Wednesday and Friday are dedicated to the Cross, Thursday to the Mother of God, and Saturday to the martyrs.64 A later Syriac horologion offers a variant system: Tuesday is in honor of John the Baptist, Thursday of the apostles, and Saturday of the martyrs—and the dead.65 The manuscript tradition of the hymnographical books gives other variants of this series, which appears to have been established by the tenth century, though not in every detail.66 The cycle originated, then, in the Middle East and was received in Constantinople by the eleventh century, when Michael Psellos dedicated a small treatise to it.67 The hypothesis that the series of weekday commemorations takes its origins from Anastasios of Sinai’s Commentary on the Hexaemeron (CPG 7770) is to be rejected:68 that work is at least four centuries later than Anastasios, who died sometime after 700. Note that Saturday in this weekly system, as it appears in the eighth-century manuscripts of the Georgian lectionary edited by M. Tarchnischvili, is a day of the saints and/ or of the dead: “Haec acolouthia sabbatorum. Psalmus et alleluia sanctorum aut animae.” 69 It is not impossible that the choice of Saturday as the day for commemorating the dead was influenced by the old Jewish belief that on this day, rest—the Sabbath rest—was given not only to the living but also to the souls of the dead in Sheol. More important from the perspective of Christian theology, of course, is the coincidence of Saturday as the day of simultaneous commemoration of the saints and of the dead. The hagiopolite decision to put together the saints and the deceased remains in the same theological direction as expressed in the Urtext of the Chrysostom anaphora cited earlier, in which there was no distinction whatever in the original intercessions between the saints and the departed: the eucharistic oblation was offered for both. Taft’s study on “Praying to or for the Saints” has demonstrated this crucial point.70 J. Mateos, “Un Horologion ine´dit de Saint-Sabas. Le codex sinaı¨tique grec 863 (IXe sie`cle),” in Me´langes Euge`ne Tisserant, vol. 3, ST 233 (Vatican City, 1964), 49–54. 65 M. Black, A Christian Palestinian Syriac Horologion (Berlin MS. Or. Oct. 1019) (Cambridge, 1954), 85–86 (ordinary of Vespers) and 103–43 (hymnographical anthologion). 66 Ch. Hannick, “Le texte de l’Oktoechos,” in Dimanche. Office selon les huits tons, jOktw´ hco", La prie`re des Eglises de rite byzantin 3 (Chevetogne, 1972), 39–40 and 54. 67 K. Snipes, “An Unedited Treatise of Michael Psellos on the Iconography of Angels and on the Religious Festivals Celebrated on Each Day of the Week,” in Gonimos. Neoplatonic and Byzantine Studies Presented to Leendert G. Westerink at 75 (Buffalo, N.Y., 1988), 189–205. 68 This was the hypothesis of A. Grabar, “L’iconographie du dimanche principalement `a Byzance,” in Le Dimanche, Lex Orandi 39 (Paris, 1965), 169–84. 69 M. Tarchnischvili, Le grand lectionnaire de l’Eglise de Je´rusalem (Ve–VIIIe sie`cle), CSCO 189 (Louvain, 1959), 83–85. 70 On this see Taft “Praying to or for the Saints,” 439–55. 64

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The annual commemorations of the dead held nowadays on Carnival Saturday and the Saturday before Whitsunday are unknown to the liturgical order of the Great Church. In any case the commemoration of Carnival Saturday is to be considered another loan from Jerusalem71 imported to Constantinople by the Stoudite monks mainly as a commemoration of their departed brothers,72 which in other circumstances would become a commemoration of those fallen in war.73 Note, however, that all of these commemorations have to do with Saturday. Two other long intercessionary prayers for the dead ( H J ajenna´ w" bru´ ousa zwtikh` kai` fwtistikh` phgh` ktl. and So` n ga` r wJ" ajlhqw'" kai` me´ ga o“ntw" musth´ rion ktl.) are found in some manuscripts and in the funeral rite textus receptus, included among the prayers of the Kneeling Service at vespers Pentecost Sunday evening, which marks the end of the Easter period.74 In this way the dead are commemorated on Saturday before Whitsunday and at sunset on Whitsunday itself. A funeral office has coalesced and is perfectly recognizable by the end of the ferial office (Monday to Friday) of the Mesonyktikon.75 The last prayer to be noted is a prayer pertaining to the genre of opisthambonos prayers recited “behind the ambo” after the original dismissal of the eucharistic liturgy. One such prayer is destined for liturgies offered in suffrage for the dead; its textual tradition is limited to the Italo-Greek mss.76 COLLECTIONS OF CANONS Regarding the kontakion that its translator, Grosdidier de Matons, calls the Hymne aux saints moines et asce`tes ( W J " ajgaphta´ ), and which the kontakia collections prescribe for Cheesefare Saturday (th'" turofa´ gou), the Saturday before Lent, it should be noted that the Saturday in question was not originally destined for the commemoration of the dead, as witnessed by the tenth-century manuscript H of the typikon of the Great Church.77 According to Grosdidier de Matons, this kontakion, transmitted in three versions of unequal length, should be taken as an exhortation directed at the living monks and not as meant for the celebration of their funerals: this is the situation in witness Q of the manuscript tradition, the eleventh-century Patmos 213.78 But it is also true that three schematologia (Grottaferrata G.b. V and Vaticanus gr. 1863 and 1869) transmit this hymn precisely as part of the funeral of a monk.79 The second prooimion of the kontakion is taken literally from Psalm 83:2, one of the three psalms of the vigil attested already at the end of tenth century in the above-mentioned Grottaferrata G.b. X. Grosdidier de Matons relativizes this liturgical argument, probably because he knew of the use of Psalm Tarchnischvili, Le grand lectionnaire, 45–46. M. Arranz, Le Typicon du monaste`re du Saint-Sauveur `a Messine. Codex Messinensis gr. 115, A.D. 1131, OCA 185 (Rome, 1969), 187–88; cf. Dmitrievskii, Opisanie, vol. 1, Tupika´ , 503–4. 73 Th. De´torakis and J. Mossay, “Un office byzantin ine´dit pour ceux qui sont morts `a la guerre, dans le cod. Sin. gr. 734–735,” Le Muse´on 101 (1988): 183–211. 74 ˆte dans l’ancien Cf. M. Arranz, “Les prie`res de la Gonyklisia ou de la Ge´nuflexion du jour de la Penteco Euchologe byzantin,” OCP 48 (1982): 92–123. 75 JWrolo´ gion perie´ con th` n hJmeronu´ ktion ajkolouqi´an (Rome, 1937), 38–40. 76 T. Minisci, “Le preghiere ojpisqa´ mbwnoi dei codici criptensi, I,” BollGrott, n.s., 2 (1948): 123. 77 ´ glise, 2:8. Mateos, Le Typicon de la Grande E 78 Romanos le Me´lode, Hymnes, vol. 5, ed. Grosdidier de Matons, 373–74. 79 Ibid., 374–75 with other later mss. 71 72

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83 in the funeral rites only from the later twelfth-century manuscript Vaticanus gr. 1863.80 CONCLUSION Can any overriding conclusions be gleaned from this mass of detail? From the point of view of the liturgical sources, the history of Byzantine funerals is marked by two basic currents, cathedral and monastic. But ritual history apart, Byzantine funerals are also a subject of historical, thematic, and theological interest. 1. With respect to the historical evolution of the ritual structures, the development is rather simple. We are dealing with an ancient repertory of prayers of the celebrant traditionally inserted into a ritual framework modeled on monastic matins of a Stoudite type. In this context, the history of the funeral is not at all different from the parallel history of vespers, the vigil or pannychis, and of Stoudite monastic matins. In the tenth century there is still only one funeral rite. Then the evolution of matins generates several different funeral typologies for as many categories of the dead: clergymen, monks, laity. But these three funerals are not so much three distinct rites as three stages in the evolution of one and the same original, pristine funeral rite. 2. The integration of the celebrant’s ancient prayers for the dead within the structure of monastic matins with its rich hymnography has brought into juxtaposition two different ways of seeing death. In the presidential prayers, there prevails the New Testament categories of rest and repose in the bosom of Abraham in the hope of the resurrection, while in the hymnography there dominates a realism that is often macabre. The vision of death here is not, in a certain sense, “theological” (that is, based on God and human destiny as seen through divine revelation in the scriptures) but rather “anthropological.” The dead person whose funeral is being celebrated is the one speaking of death to those present, insisting on the decomposition of the body and the vanity of the human adventure. In this way the Byzantine homo religiosus realizes his wish to “warm his brothers,” a desire proper to the rich man in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man from Luke 16:19–31. This vision of death transmitted by the hymnography matures in the background of Middle Eastern monasticism and has its exact parallel, for example, in the Gallican monastic funeral.81 Of course, in no Christian tradition should one expect from the funeral rite a detailed treatise on eschatology, and this is true also for the Great Church. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the ideas developed by Byzantine funeral hymnography provoke in the relatives mourning the deceased an effect exactly opposite to that consolation of hearts that the ancient Inclination Prayer aimed to produce. Between these two opposing visions only a coexistence is possible, but certainly not an organic synthesis. In the hymnography all the Hellenistic uncertainty about the hereafter, conceived as a place of turbulence and discomfort rather than as a place of quiet and peace, lives on. But what is still more surprising is the total lack of any allusion to the paschal death of Christ illumined by the resurrection: because of the dynamics of the risen Christ’s victory over death, it provides the classic Christian typology of the Christian’s transition to the other life. 80 81

Ibid., 380–81. Ph. Rouillard, “I riti dei funerali,” in Anamnesis 7: I sacramentali e le benedizioni (Genoa, 1989), 206.

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3. The archaic character of the beautiful prayer O J qeo` " tw'n pneuma´ twn kai` pa´ sh" sarko´ " (“God of the spirits and of all flesh”) found in the excavations of Nessana was already noted. I now analyze its contents briefly, on the basis of the oldest text in the Barberini Euchology from the eighth century. God of the spirits and of all flesh, who has vanquished death and trampled on the devil and given life to the world, give rest to the soul of your servant N. in a place of light, a place of refreshment, a place of repose, from which pain, sorrow, and sighing have fled; because you are so good and love mankind, forgive his every offense, whether in word or deed or thought; for there is no man living and never will be who does not sin; but you alone are without any sin, your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and your word is truth. For you are the life and the resurrection of the dead, and we give glory to you . . .

The prayer is addressed to the triune God, while in the textus receptus the address has been made christological, which is not really justifiable. So to God as the Holy Trinity is attributed the victory over the devil and over death in favor of the life of the world. This affirmation of the positive project of God for humankind and his creation enabled the compiler to ask rest for the souls of the dead in the messianic place described in the terminology of Isaiah 35:10. The asking for rest is of course connected to the request for forgiveness based on the divine filanqrwpi´a, God’s love for humankind, and this petition is given a more important place with respect to either the sinfulness of man or God’s justice, so that the one mitigates the other. The Inclination Prayer (kefaloklisi´a) completes the concepts expressed in the first prayer: Lord O Lord, you are the relief of the troubled and the consolation of the mournful and redeemer of all the afflicted. Comfort those who are seized with pain for the deceased; being merciful, heal all suffering of sadness gripping their hearts, and give rest to your servant reposing in the bosom of Abraham in the hope of the resurrection; because you are the resurrection of your servants, and we give glory to you . . .

The attention here is shifted from the deceased to the mourners, for whom comfort and consolation are asked. This request, formulated in the context of the liturgical celebration, is meant to obtain a real healing of the spirit. It is precisely in this prayer that we can find, perhaps, the reason why St. Theodore of Stoudios in his correspondence counts funerals among the sacraments, an idea now being taken up again by Greek Orthodox theology. In this perspective of charismatic healing entrusted to the ministry of the church, the funeral could be placed among the better-attested sacraments (musth´ ria) of the remission of sins and the anointing of the sick. The two prayers complement each other, creating a perfect circle of ecclesiastical communion (koinwni´a): the mourners and the church both pray for the dead, while the church prays for both the mourners and the deceased. In this context one can grasp the modern understanding of liturgical theology, which sees in the funeral more a celebration of life for the benefit of the living than a celebration for the departed. 4. Some of the ritual elements offer an implicit paschal perspective. In the most ancient ritual, Grottaferrata G.b. X, the celebrant pours oil on the tomb, an oil expressly blessed with the same formula used for the oil of the prebaptismal anointing. During the pouring of the oil, the Alleluia is chanted as at baptism. This reflects the root symbolism

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of the Epistle to the Romans 6:3–5, for baptism is a burial with Christ unto resurrection with him; and the same symbolism is applied to the funeral concluded in this way with the hope of final resurrection. If the liturgy is a symbol of Christian life, death cannot be extraneous to this process of symbolization, but must be an organic part of it. When in the twelfth century the oil is no longer poured on the still-empty tomb but directly onto the body of the dead, the symbolism evaporates. A more optimistic hypothesis could identify a parallel with the anointing of the body of Christ intended by the myrrh-bearing women, the first witnesses to the resurrection, and for that reason immortalized in Byzantine Sunday matins. No text, however, supports such a hypothesis. Universita` degli Studi di Siena

Appendix Funerals in Grottaferrata G.b. X (10th–11th century), folios 77r–83r

Psalms are numbered according to the Septuagint numeration. The orthography is normalized, and iotacisms corrected without notice. Forms with phonetical particularities are noted in the apparatus. The apparatus includes also the corrected forms of the reading and some late Greek forms. Minor editorial interventions are noted in the text with standard parentheses ( ) for suspended letters, square brackets [ ] for letters lacking for material reasons, ⬍ ⬎ for letters added, { } for letters to be cancelled. IHEG ⫽ E. Follieri, Initia Hymnorum Ecclesiae Graecae, 6 vols., (Rome, 1960–66). 77r A j kolouqi´a eij" koimhqe´ nta. Crh` ginw´ skein o”ti protiqeme´ nou tou' leiya´ nou me´ son th'" ejkklhsi´a", eij me` n ejsti`n kosmiko´ ",1 a“rcetai oJ iJereu´ "⭈ “Eujloghme´ nh hJ basilei´a,” kai` le´ gei ta` eJxa´ yalma, eij de` ejsti`n monaco´ ", ouj le´ gei ta` eJxa´ yalma, ajlla` to` n ⬘ yalmo´ n⭈ “ O J katoikw'n” (Ps. 90:1), kai` meta` to` te´ lo" tou' yalmou' oJ dia´ kono" ` ´ thn sunapthn⭈ Ej n eijrh´ nh tou' Kuri´ou. U J pe` r th'" a“nwqen eijrh´ nh". U J pe` r mnh´ mh", koimh´ sew", ajne´ sew", ajnapau´ sew" kai` ajfe´ sew" aJmartiw'n tou' dou´ lou tou' qeou' oJ d(ei'na), tou' Kuri´ou dehqw'men. U J pe` r tou' sugcwrhqh'nai2 aujtv' te kai` hJmi'n pa'n plhmme´ lhma eJkou´ sio´ n te kai` ajkou´ sion, tou' Kuri´ou. 77v U J pe` r tou' katata´ xai aujto` n ejn ko´ lpoi" A j braa` m kai` Ij saa` k kai` Ij akw´ b, tou' Kuri´ou dehqw'men. U J pe` r tou' sunariqmhqh'nai aujto` n ejn corv' tw'n ejklektw'n ejn th' basilei´a tw'n oujranw'n, tou'. U J pe` r tou' euJrei'n aujto` n ca´ rin kai` e“leo" ejn hJme´ ra th'" kri´sew", tou' Kuri´ou dehqw'men. U J pe` r tou' katapemfqh'nai aJgi´ou" ajgge´ lou" eijrh´ nh" oJdhgoujnta" aujto´ n, tou' Kuri´ou dehqw'men. U J pe` r tou' parasth'nai aujto` n a“mempton kai` ajkata´ kriton tv' foberv' bh´ mati tou' Cristou' kai` euJrei'n e“leo" kai` a“fesin aJmartiw'n, tou' Kuri´ou. ”Opw" Ku´ rio" oJ qeo` " oJ prosdexa´ meno" to` pneu'ma aujtou' katata´ xh aujto` n ejn cw´ rv3 fwteinv' e“nqa oiJ di´kaioi ajnapau´ ontai, tou' Kuri´ou dehqw'men. U J pe` r tou' rJusqh'nai hJma'" ajpo` pa´ sh". O J iJereu` " th` n eujch´ n⭈ O J qeo` " tw'n pneuma´ twn kai` pa´ sh" sarko´ ", oJ to` n qa´ naton katargh´ sa" kai` zwh` n tv' ko´ smv carisa´ meno", ajna´ pauson th` n yuch` n tou' dou´ lou tou'd(e) ejn to´ pv fwteinv'{n}, ejn cw´ ra ajnayu´ xew", e“nqa ajpe´ dra ojdu´ nh, lu´ ph kai` stenagmo´ "⭈ pa'n aJma´ rthma pracqe` n ejn lo´ gv h‘ e“rgv h‘ kata` dia´ noi78r -an wJ" ajgaqo` " kai` fila´ nqrwpo" qeo` " sugcw´ rhson, o”ti oujk e“stin a“nqrwpo" o’" zh´ setai kai` oujc Cod. kosmiko´ n. Cod. sugcwreqh'nai. 3 Cod. corw'. 1 2

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aJmarth´ sei⭈ su` ga` r mo´ no" pa´ sh" aJmarti´a" ejkto` " uJpa´ rcei", kai´ hJ dikaiosu´ nh sou dikaiosu´ nh eij" to` n aijw'na kai` oJ lo´ go" sou ajlh´ qeia. O J dia´ kono"⭈ A j ntilabou'. Ta` ejle´ h tou' qeou' kai` th` n filanqrwpi´an aujtou' kai` a“fesin aJmartiw'n aijthsa´ ` menoi, eJautou" kai` ajllh´ lou" kai` pa'san th` n zwh` n hJmw'n Cristv' tv' qev' paraqw´ meqa. Ej kfw´ (nhsi")⭈ ”Oti su` ei« hJ zwh` kai` hJ ajna´ pausi" tw'n kekoimhme´ nwn, kai` soi` th` n do´ xan ajnape´ mpomen. Kai` le´ gei to` A j llhlou´ i¨a, h«co" pl. b⬘. Skia` parercome´ nh ejsti`n oJ bi´o" tw'n ajnqrw´ pwn, pro´ skairon 4 a“nqo" kai` met∆ ojli´gon marai´netai, dio` to` n dou'lo´ n, sou, Criste´ , meta` dikai´wn ajna´ pauson.5 Ej n tv' nav' eJstw'te" th'" do´ xh" sou, ejn oujranv' eJsta´ nai nomi´zomen⭈ Qeoto´ ke, pu´ lh ejpoura´ nie, a“noixon hJmi'n th` n qu´ ran tou' ejle´ ou" sou (IHEG 1:472). Kai` eujq(u` ") le´ gei to` n “Amwmon, yalmo` " rih⬘, Maka´ rioi oiJ a“mwmoi, e”w" tou'⭈ Zh´ setai (Ps. 118:1–175). Kai` le´ gei ka´ qisma, h«co" pl. a⬘⭈ A j na´ pauson, swth` r hJmw'n (IHEG 1:98). Kai` eujq(u` ") to` n kano´ na, kai` eij" th` n g⬘ tou' kano´ no" le´ getai pente´ sticon eij"6 ta` diakonika´ , zh´ tei o”ti proegra´ fhsan, kai` oJ iJereu` " th` n eujch´ n⭈ Ku´ rie, Ku´ rie, hJ7 tw'n qlibome´ nwn 78v paramuqi´a kai` tw'n penqou´ ntwn para´ klhsi" kai` pa´ ntwn tw'n ejn ojligoyuci´a ajnti´lhyi" uJpa´ rcwn, tou` " tv'{n} pe´ nqei tou' koimhqe´ nto" sunecome´ nou" th' sh' eujsplagcni´a8 paramu´ qhsai, pa'n a“lgo" lu´ ph" ejn th' kardi´⬍a⬎ aujtw'n qera´ peuson, kai` to` n dou'lon to` n d(ei'na) ejp∆ ejlpi´di ajnasta´ sew" kekoimhme´ non ejn ko´ lpoi" A j braa` m ajna´ pauson. O J dia´ kono"⭈ A j ntilabou', sw'son, ejle´ hson. Ta` ejle´ h tou' qeou' kai` th` n filanqrwpi´an aujtou' kai` a“fesin aJmartiw'n. Ej kfw´ (nhsi")⭈ Su` ga` r ei« ajna´ pausi" tou' sou' dou´ lou, kai` soi´ th` n do´ xan. Kai` ya´ llei to` konda´ kion, kai` eij" th` n "⬘ oJ dia´ kono" pente´ sticon eij"9 ta` diakonika´ . Eujch´ ⭈ De´ spota Ku´ rie oJ qeo` " hJmw'n, oJ pla´ sa" to` n a“nqrwpon kat∆ eijko´ na sh` n kai` oJmoi´wsin, kai` qe´ meno" ejn aujtv' pnoh` n zwh'", aJmarth´ santa de` aujto` n qana´ tv ejpagagw` n kai` to` n ejk gh'" eij" gh'n ajpostre´ fwn, th` n de` yuch` n eij" eJauto` n proskalou´ meno", aujto` " ajna´ pauson th` n yuch` n tou' dou´ lou sou oJ d(ei'na) ejn to´ pv fwteinv', ejn to´ pv ajnayu´ xew", e“nqa ajpe´ dra ojdu´ nh, lu´ ph kai` stenagmo´ ", e“nqa ejpiskopei' to` fw'" tou' prosw´ pou sou, Ku´ rie, ejn ko´ lpoi" A j braa´ m 79r kai` Ij saa´ k kai` Ij akw´ b, meta` pa´ ntwn tw'n aJgi´wn tw'n ajp∆ aijw'no´ " soi eujaresthsa´ ntwn, kai` ei“ ti ejplhmme´ lhsen, ei“te ejn pra´ xei h‘ lo´ gv h‘ kata` dia´ noian, aujto` " wJ" ajgaqo` " kai` fila´ nqrwpo" qeo` " a“ne", a“fe", sugcw´ rhson, paridw` n aujtou' te kai` hJmw'n ta` ajnomh´ mata, hJmw'n de` ta` te´ lh th'" zwh'" ajnw´ duna kai` ajkatai´scunta kataxi´wson, o”te qe´ lei" kai` o”te bou´ lh - mo´ non a“neu aijscu´ nh" kai` paraptwma´ twn. O J dia´ kono"⭈ jAntilabou', sw'son. Ta` ejle´ h tou' qeou' kai` th` n filanqrwpi´an. Ej kfw´ (nhsi")⭈ Su` ga` r ei« hJ ajna´ pausi" tou' sou' dou´ lou, kai` soi` th` n do´ xan. Cod. ajnqh'. Ineditum videtur. 6 Cod. ejk. 7 Cod. oJ. 8 Cod. eujsplacnia. 9 Cod. eJk. 4 5

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Kai` le´ gei to` konda´ kion, kai` eij" th` n q⬘ oJ dia´ kono" ta` diakonika` - to` pente´ sticon proegra´ fh. O J iJereu` " th` n eujch´ n⭈ De´ spota oJ qeo` " tw'n pneuma´ twn kai` pa´ sh" sarko´ ", oJ didou` " katastolh` n do´ xh" ajnti` pneu´ mato" ajkhdi´a", kai` th' ajporrh´ tv sou sofi´a eJnw´ sa" yuch` n kai` sw'ma, kai` pa´ lin ajna{na}lu´ wn, to` ⬍n⬎ me` n cou'n tv' coi?, to` de` pneu'ma pro` " eJauto´ n, kaqw` " e“dwka", ajfelko´ meno"⭈ aujto´ ", de´ spota Criste´ , pro´ sdexai th` n yuch` n tou' dou´ lou sou oJ d(ei'na) kai` kataxi´wson aujto` n meta` tw'n aJgi´wn sou ajnapau´ esqai eij" to´ pon fwteino´ n, eij" cw´ ra⬍n⬎ ajnapau´ sew", eij" cw´ ran ajnayu´ xew", 79v ejkei', o”qen ajpe´ dra ojdu´ nh, lu´ ph kai` stenagmo´ ", o”ti oujk e“stin toi'" dou´ loi" sou qa´ nato" ⬍wJ"⬎ ajlhqw'", ajlla` yuch'" meta´ stasi"⭈ kai` ei“ ti h”marten ejn lo´ gv h‘ e“rgv h‘ ejnqumh´ sei, pa´ ride wJ" ajgaqo` " kai` fila´ nqrwpo" qeo´ ", tw'n penqou´ ntwn ajntilh´ ptwr, kai` paramuqi´a10 genou'⭈ kata´ lamyon th` n ajclu` n th'" ajqumi´a" aujtw'n tv' noerv'{n} sou fwti´, hJma'" de` tou` " sunelqo´ ⬍n⬎ta"11 eij" th` n tou' leiya´ nou timh` n perikra´ tunon, kai` i”lew" genou' tai'" aJmarti´ai" hJmw'n. O J dia´ kono"⭈ jAntilabou', sw'(son). Ta` ejle´ h tou' qeou' kai` th´ n. Ej kfw´ (nhsi")⭈ ”Oti su` ei« hJ a“fesi" tw'n ptaisma´ twn hJmw'n kai` soi` th` n do´ xan. Kai` le´ gei fwt(agwga´ rion), h«co" pl. b⬘⭈ Nu'n ajnapausa´ mhn kai` eu»ron a“nesin pollh` n o”ti ejte´ cqhn ejn fqora' kai` metete´ qhn pro` " zwh´ n (IHEG 2:543). Le´ gei to` aujto` b⬘ kai` g⬘. Q(eotoki´on)⭈ Nu'n ejxelexa´ mhn th` n qeomh´ tora aJgnh´ n, o”ti ejte´ cqh{"} ejx aujth'" Cristo` " oJ pa´ ntwn lutrwth´ " (IHEG 2:546). Kai` le´ gei ta` stichra` eij" tou` " ai“nou". Kai` gi´netai corosta´ simon, du´ o coroi´, kai` a“rcetai oJ dexiw'n coro´ "⭈ ajnti´fwnon a⬘, uJpo´ yalma⭈ jAllhlou´ i¨a triplou'n, h«co" b⬘, yalmo` " kb⬘⭈ Ku´ rio" poimai´nei me kai` oujde´ n me uJsterh´ sei{"} (Ps. 22:1). Kai` meta` to` plhrw'sai o”lon to` n yalmo´ n, le´ gei Do´ xa, 80r kai` le´ gei to` tropa´ rion h«co" b⬘⭈ Ej k gh'" plastourgh´ sa" me, eij" gh'n pa´ lin poreu´ esqai th' paraba´ sei me kate´ krina"⭈ e“sthsa" hJme´ ran ejta´ sew" ⬍ejn h» ta` krupta` th'" eJka´ stou pra´ xew"⬎12 fanera` pari´stantai ejnw´ pio´ n sou⭈ to´ te fei'sai mou, ajnama´ rthte oJ qeo´ ", kai` tw'n ejsfalme´ nwn moi sugcw´ rhsin didou´ ", th'" basilei´a" sou mh` cwri´sh" me (IHEG 1:388). Kai` nu'n⭈ W J " a“nqo" marai´netai kai´ (IHEG 5:152). O J dia´ kono"⭈ “Eti kai` e“ti ejn eijrh´ nh tou' Kuri´ou. U J pe` r mnh´ mh", koimh´ sew", ajne´ sew", kai` makari´a" ajnapau´ sew". ”Opw" Ku´ rio" oJ qeo` " hJmw'n katata´ xh to` pneu'ma aujtou' ejn to´ pv fwteinv', e“nqa oiJ di´kaioi ajnapau´ ontai. U J pe` r tou' rJusqh'nai hJma'". Kai` klino´ meno"13 oJ iJereu` " th` n eujch` n le´ gei⭈ De´ spota Ku´ rie oJ qeo` " oJ th'{"} sofi´a{"} sou kataskeua´ sa" to` n a“nqrwpon kai` th' eijko´ ni{"} sou timh´ sa" aujto´ n, kai` qe´ meno" ejn aujtv' pnoh` n zwh'", kai` eijsagagw` n eij" to` n ko´ smon tou'ton politeu´ esqai ejp∆ ejlpi´di zwh'" aijwni´ou, aJmarth´ santa de` aujto` n14 qana´ tou ejpagagw` n kai` dialu´ sa", kai` to` n me` n ejk gh'" eij" gh'n ajnalu´ wn, th` n de` yuch` n pro` " eJauto` n proskalou´ meno", aujto` " de´ spota fila´ nqrwpe, pro´ sdexai to` pneu'ma tou' dou´ lou sou to` n d(ei'na), kai` pros- 80v -ago´ menon pro` " to` n a”gion qro´ non sou, pa´ sh" timh'" kai` ajne´ sew" ajxi´wson fula´ sswn eij" ajna´ stasin, kai` ei“ ti wJ" a“nqrwpo" sarki` zw'n lo´ gv h‘ e“rgv h‘ ejn dianoi´a Cod. paramu´ qei". Cod. sunelqw'ta". 12 Suppl. ex Triv´ dion katanuktiko´ n (Rome, 1879), 780. 13 Cod. kli´na". 14 Cod. aujtw'. 10 11

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h”marten, aujto` " wJ" ajgaqo` " kai` ejleh´ mwn qeo´ ", a“ne", a“fe", sugcw´ rhson, paridw` n aujtou' kai` hJmw'n ta` paraptw´ mata. jAntilabou', sw'son, ejle´ hson. Ta` ejle´ h tou' qeou' kai` th` n filanqrwpi´an. Ej kfw´ (nhsi")⭈ Su` ga` r ei« oJ qeo` " mo´ no" oijkti´rmwn, kai` soi` pre´ pei. Kai` meta` th` n eujch` n ka´ qisma, h«co" b⬘⭈ Mnh´ sqhti, Ku´ rie, wJ" (IHEG 2:436). Kai` eij" to` Do´ xa ajnti` q(eotoki´on) le´ gei⭈ Sh´ meron cwri´zomai (IHEG 3:497). O J ajpo´ stolo" pro` " RJ wmai´ou"⭈ jAdelfoi´, w”sper di∆ eJno` " ajnqrw´ pou hJ aJmarti´a, te´ lo"⭈ zw'nta" de` tv' qev' ejn Cristv' Ij hsou' tv' Kuri´v hJmw'n (Rom. 5:12–6:11). jAnti´fwnon b⬘, yalmo` " kg⬘ yallome´ nwn uJpo´ yalma⭈ jAllhlou´ i¨a triplou'n, h«co" g⬘⭈ Tou' Kuri´ou hJ gh` kai` to` plh´ rwma aujth'" (Ps. 23:1), kai` plhrou'sin15 to` n yalmo´ n⭈ le´ gei h«co" g⬘⭈ jAna´ pauson, Ku´ rie, th` n yuch` n tou' dou´ lou sou.16 Do´ xa. Tv' tu´ pv tou' staurou' sou, Criste` oJ qeo´ ", oJ qa´ nato" nene´ krwtai (IHEG 4:369). O J dia´ kono"⭈ “Eti kai` e“ti ejn eijrh´ nh. U J pe` r mnh´ mh", koimh´ sew", ajne´ sew", kai` makari´a" ajnapau´ sew" tou' ajdelfou' hJmw'n oJ d(ei'na) tou' Kuri´ou dehqw'men. ”Opw" Ku´ rio" oJ qeo` " hJmw'n 81r katata´ xh to` pneu'ma aujtou' ejn to´ pv fwteinv' e“nqa oiJ di´kaioi ajnapau´ ontai, tou' Kuri´ou dehqw'men. U J pe` r tou' katata´ xai ` ` ´ ` ´ ` ` ´ ` “ aujton ejn kolpoi" jAbraam kai Ij saak kai Ij akwb, enqa oiJ dikaioi. U J per tou' rJusqh'nai hJma'". O J iJereu` " th` n eujch´ n⭈ O J qeo` " tw'n pneuma´ twn kai` pa´ sh" sarko´ ", oJ tw'n oJrwme´ nwn kai` tw'n ajora´ twn poihth´ ", oJ kata` th` n ajpo´ rrhto´ n sou boulh` n eJnw´ sa" yuch` n {kai`} sw´ mati, kai` pa´ lin kata` to` qe´ lhma th'" sh'" ajgaqo´ thto" dialu´ wn to` pla´ sma sou o’ ejpoi´hsa", kai` to` n me` n cou'n tv' coi÷ ajnalu´ wn, to` de` pneu'ma pro` " ⬍eJ⬎auto` n proskalou´ meno", kai` katata´ sswn monai'" me´ cri th'" ajnasta´ sew" kai` ajpokalu´ yew" tou' monogenou'" sou uiJou'⭈ aujto` " de´ spota, ajntilabou' th'" yuch'" tou' dou´ lou{"} sou, kai` ajnagagw` n aujth` n ejk tou' kosmikou' sko´ tou" kai` th'" ejxousi´a" tw'n ajntikeime´ nwn duna´ mewn rJusa´ meno", kata´ taxon ejn cw´ rv17 fwteinv', ejn cw´ ra zw´ ntwn, o”qen ajpe´ dra ojdu´ nh, lu´ ph kai` stenagmo´ ", sugcwrh´ sa" aujtv' ta` aJmarth´ mata, sugnw´ mhn para´ scwn toi'" ajnqrwpi´noi" plhmmelh´ masin, 81v ejn de` th' ca´ riti´ sou diafula´ xa", mnh´ sqhti kai` tw'n sunelhluqo´ twn timh'sai to` oJmoiopaqe´ ", kai` lo´ gisai aujtoi'" to` n ko´ pon kai` th` n spoudh` n eij" e“rgon dikaiosu´ nh", kai` tw'n penqou´ ntwn kai` ajdhmonou´ ntwn mnh´ sqhti, Ku´ rie, kai` paraka` leson aujtw'n th` n kardi´an, kai` paramuqhsa´ meno" ejle´ hson aujtou` " kai` hJma'", kai` sw'son ejn th' ejndo´ xv sou basilei´a. O J dia´ kono"⭈ jAntilabou', sw'son. Ta` ejle´ h tou' qeou' kai` th` n filanqrwpi´an. Ej kfw´ (nhsi")⭈ ”Oti pre´ pei soi pa'sa do´ xa, timh` kai` kra´ to" kai` megalopre´ peia. Kai` le´ gei ka´ qisma, h«co" pl. d⬘⭈ O J buqoi'" sofi´a" filanqrw´ pw" (IHEG 3:6 var.). Kai` le´ gei Do´ xa. 18 Parh'lqe hJ skia´ (IHEG 3:281). O J ajpo´ stolo" pro` " Korinqi´ou". jAdelfoi´, gnwri´zw uJmi'n to` eujagge´ lion, te´ lo"⭈ kai` ou”tw" ejn Cristv' pa´ nte" zwopoihqh´ sontai (1 Cor. 15:1–22). Cod. plhrw´ sin. Ineditum videtur. 17 Cod. corw'. 18 Cod. paragiw. 15 16

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jAnti´fwnon g⬘, uJpo´ yalma⭈ jAllhlou´ i¨a triplou'n, yalmo` " ph⬘, h«co" pl. d⬘⭈ W J " ajgaphta` ta` skhnw´ mata´ sou, Ku´ rie tw'n. Kai` le´ gei Do´ xa⭈ “Algo" tv' jAda` m ejcrhma´ tisen (IHEG 1:78). Kai` nu'n. “Ontw" mataio´ th" ta` su´ mpanta (IHEG 3:122). O J dia´ kono"⭈ “Eti kai` e“ti ejn eijrh´ nh. U J pe` r mnh´ mh", koimh´ sew", ajne´ sew", kai` makari´a" ajnapau´ sew" tou' ajdelfou' hJmw'n oJ d(ei'na), tou' Kuri´ou dehqw'men. ”Opw" Ku´ rio" oJ qeo` " hJmw'n katata´ xh to` pneu'ma 82r aujtou' ejn to´ pv fwteinv', e“nqa oiJ di´kaioi aj(napau´ ontai). U J pe` r tou' rJusqh'nai hJma'". O J iJereu` " th` n eujch´ n⭈ O J qeo` " tw'n pneuma´ twn kai` pa´ sh" sarko´ ", oJ Ku´ rio" tw'n kurieuo´ ntwn, oJ qeo` " th'" paraklh´ sew", oJ to` n qa´ naton katargh´ sa", oJ to` n dia´ bolon katapath´ sa", kai` zwh` n carisa´ meno" tv' ge´ nei tw'n ajnqrw´ pwn, oJ qeo` " tw'n pate´ rwn hJmw'n, oJ qeo` " tw'n aJgi´wn, hJ ajna´ pausi" tw'n qlibome´ nwn, ajna´ pauson th` n yuch` n tou' dou´ lou sou ejn to´ pv fwteinv'{n}, ejn to´ pv ajnayu´ xew", o”qen ajpe´ dra oJdu´ nh, lu´ ph kai` stenagmo´ ", kai` para´ scou aujtv' eij" ko´ lpou" U jAbraa` m kai` pa´ ntwn tw'n aJgi´wn katagh'nai, kai` toi'" penqou'sin ca´ risai paramu´ qion, tw'n qlibome´ nwn oJ swth´ r, tw'n ojligoyu´ cwn hJ paramuqi´a, fu´ laxon de` hJma'" ejn tv' aijw'ni tou´ tv kai` ejn tv' me´ llonti. O J dia´ kono"⭈ jAntilabou'. Ta` ejle´ h. Ej kfw´ (nhsi")⭈ Oijktirmoi'" kai` filanqrwpi´a tou' monogenou'" sou uiJou'. Kai` le´ gei ka´ qisma, h«co" pl. b⬘⭈ Th' parousi´a sou th' fobera'.19 O J ajpo´ stolo" pro` " Korinqi´ou". jAdelfoi´, ti´ poih´ sousin oiJ baptizo´ menoi uJpe` r tw'n nekrw'n, te´ lo"⭈ 82v oujde` hJ fqora` th` n ajfqarsi´an klhronomei' (1 Cor. 15:29–50). Mesv´ dion, h«co" pl. b⬘⭈ Makari´a hJ oJdo` " h’n poreu´ h sh´ meron, o”ti hJtoima´ sqh soi to´ po" ajnapau´ sew". Sti´co"⭈ Ej pi´streyon, yuch´ mou, eij" th` n ajna´ pausi´n sou, o”ti Ku´ rio" eujerge´ thsen. O J ajpo´ stolo" pro` " Qessalonikei'"⭈ jAdelfoi´, ouj qe´ lw uJma'", te´ lo"⭈ ejn toi'" lo´ goi" tou´ toi" (1 Thess. 4:13–18). jAllhlou´ i¨a, h«co" pl. d⬘, sti´co"⭈ Maka´ rio" o’n ejxele´ xw kai` pros(ela´ bou) (Ps. 64:5). Eujagge´ lion kata` Ij wa´ nnhn. Ei«pen oJ Ku´ rio" pro` " tou` " ejlhluqo´ ta", te´ lo"⭈ ajlla` to` qe´ lhma tou' pe´ myanto´ " me patro´ " (John 5:[25]20–30). J rw'nte´ " me a“(fwnon) (IHEG 3:168). Kai` gi´netai oJ ajspasmo` " Kai` le´ gei th` n ejktenh´ n. Kai` ya´ llousin⭈21 O tou' leiya´ nou, yallo(me´ nou) tou' stic(hrou'), h«co" b⬘⭈ Deu'te, teleutai'on ajspasmo´ n (IHEG 1:296). Kai` oJ iJereu` " aJgia´ zei e“laion, ejmfusa' g⬘ kai` sfragi´zei g⬘ kai` le´ gei th` n eujch´ n⭈ “De´ spota Ku´ rie oJ qeo` " tw'n pate´ rwn hJmw'n,” zh´ tei ojpi´sw, eij" to` a”gion ba´ ptisma, ejkei' ejgra´ fh. Kai` tiqeme´ nou22 tou' leiya´ nou eij" to` mnh'ma, ya´ llo(usi) to` tropa´ rion tou'to{n}, h«co" b⬘⭈ jAnoi´xate´ moi pu´ la" (IHEG 1:123). Sti´co"⭈ Au”th hJ kata´ pausi´" mou.23 Kai` le´ getai to` aujto` tropa´ rion, qeotoki´on⭈ Th` n pa'san (IHEG 4:83). Ineditum videtur. Cf. Mateos, Typicon, 2:194. 21 Cod. ya´ lloun. 22 Cod. ti´qete. 23 Ineditum videtur. 19 20

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Kai` ejpice´ ei ejpa´ nw aujtou' to` a”gion e“laion stauroeidw'" g⬘, ya´ llonto" to` jAllhlou´ i¨a, h«co" pl. d⬘. Kai` meta` tou'to oJ dia´ kono"⭈ Tou' Kuri´ou de(hqw'men). 83r O J iJereu` " th` n eujch` n eij" to` n ta´ fon⭈ Ku´ rie, Ku´ rie, hJ tw'n qlibome´ nwn, zh´ tei o”ti proegra´ fh ojpi´sw eij" th` n (sic) g⬘, st⬍r⬎e´ yon fu´ llon g⬘. Kai` ti´qontai aiJ pla´ kai, kai` lamba´ nei24 oJ iJereu` " to` skali´drion meta` ta` " cei'ra"25 kai` sfragi´zei to` n ta´ fon met∆ aujto` stauroeidw'", kai` ajpoplhrou'tai pa'sa ajkolouqi´a tou' leiya´ nou. 24 25

Cod. lamba´ nnei. Cf. gr. med.

This is an extract from:

Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No. 55 Editor: Alice-Mary Talbot Published by

Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection Washington, D.C. Issue year 2001 © 2002 Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University Washington, D.C. Printed in the United States of America

www.doaks.org/etexts.html

Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell in Byzantine “Beneficial Tales” JOHN WORTLEY

t is the common experience of people who indulge themselves in the less sophisticated realms of earlier Byzantine literature, hagiographical material for instance, “popular” chronicles, and the like, frequently to encounter narratives of an anecdotal nature which they distinctly remember having already read in a different context. These might appear in a different dress each time, but they are still recognizably the same (or very similar) stories, even when they occur only partially or integrated with portions of other stories. After a number of such experiences, it is impossible to resist the conviction that such anecdotes are the outcroppings of a vast and interrelated tales-tradition which, hitherto, has remained largely buried beneath the literary debris in which it is encountered. It was to investigate the full extent and dimensions of this tradition that I undertook in 1982 the compilation of a Re´pertoire designed to serve as a research tool in the hands of those who concern themselves with all types of quasi-popular literature related to the Byzantine tradition. After eighteen years and a great deal of effort, that Re´pertoire is now operable. Complete it is not and may never be, for new tales and new connections between the known ones are surfacing all the time. But, after graduating from its inception on filing cards to a simple computer program, the Re´pertoire is now freely accessible to all on the Internet, where it will continue to be updated from time to time.1 This Re´pertoire already contains abstracts of more than a thousand units (all crossindexed in various ways), most of which might not inappropriately be termed the paraleipo´ mena of Greek hagiography, the so-called spiritually beneficial tales (dihgh´ sei" yucwfelei'"), although many of them predate the heyday of hagiography. The earliest ones were recorded toward the end of the fourth century, by which time they could have been in oral circulation for many years. Most of the major collections of tales and apophthegmata were complete by the beginning of the seventh century, but tales continued to appear intermittently until the eleventh century. Indeed, there seems to have been a brief revival of the tale as a literary conceit in the tenth century, but in the eleventh the great codification of monastic lore in the Synagoge of Paul Euergetinos seems to have capped the flow of new tales and brought the tradition to a close.2 The existing tales continued nevertheless to be retold and recopied; many of them are now in print, and together they provide a rich, fascinating literature characterized by its vigorous spontaneity.

I

1 2

J. Wortley, A Re´pertoire of Byzantine Beneficial Tales (hereafter W), at http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~wortley. ´v tv' Bo´ rtoli); 6th ed., 4 vols., Athens, 1980. Paul Euergetinos, Synagoge (Venice, 1783 para` Antwni j

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As one would expect of such a literature, it also offers the reader some valuable insights into the mentality of people of little or no sophistication, of “everyday” people as far as we can tell. But this has to be qualified: most of the tales began life as the oral teaching of the monastic communities that flourished mainly in Egypt but also in SyriaPalestine and elsewhere, in the fourth to sixth centuries. True, the tales have a decidedly secular element in them from the very beginning. Even in the earliest collection of monastic lore, the late fourth-century History of the Monks in Egypt,3 there are stories about laypeople living in the world and very much up-against worldly problems. The proportion of such stories increases significantly with the advance of time, but the monastic element never disappears. The tales never completely detached themselves from their monastic origins but rather remained firmly wedded to them, just as many of the earlier tales first occur interspersed by their strictly monastic cousins, the apophthegmata. But then, this monastic connection may be an accurate reflection of contemporary conditions. Monks and monasticism were a very important element of the later Roman way of life and, far from disappearing from it, became an increasingly influential element as the monks moved into the cities and the phenomenon of the urban monastery developed. There is, moreover, little doubt that it is largely due to monastic transmission, both oral and in writing, that the tales have come down to us. Hence we have to be ever aware that, even when a tale seems to speak most directly of secular life and “how it really was,” we are hearing that tale through a monastic earphone, or viewing it through a monastic lens so to speak. In a word, everything that follows in this paper could be an indication not so much of what people “in the world” did and thought, as of what those who had abandoned the world thought one ought to do and think. Yet from the way in which these stories were told and retold across the centuries we can deduce that they functioned as a vigorous folklore; and we know that no people perpetuates a folklore totally inimical to its own beliefs and aspirations. Whether they are of the desert or of the world, many of the stories are rich in couleur locale and can be very rewarding for scholars in many fields who take the trouble to acquaint themselves with the curious peculiarities of the genre to which the tales belong. By consulting the indices of the Re´pertoire or by operating search engines on the abstracts, one discovers that they are capable of providing a wealth of data on a variety of matters: almsgiving, baths, clothes, debt, emasculation, food, gardens, graves, Jews, magic, to name a few examples. But these are for the most part material considerations; the question this paper asks is: might the tales reveal something of what the people who told and heard the tales thought, and in particular what they thought about the “last things”? It is relatively easy to deduce from the dominical parables that sowers sowed, that the road from Jerusalem to Jericho was infested with bandits, and that shepherds were prone to losing sheep; it is a much more difficult thing to discover the beliefs of the Palestinian farmer, the traveler, or the shepherd. However, since the tales are far more numerous than the parables and frequently more prolix, they may be a little more eloquent of their subjects’ beliefs. We know that later Romans were obliged to “look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” Not to do so was sacrilege; Emperor Michael II was 3

Historia Monachorum in Ægypto, (hereafter HME), ed. A.-J. Festugie`re, SubsHag 53 (Brussels, 1971).

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said to have “attained the very acme of godlessness” precisely by “denying the resurrection to come and decrying the good things promised in the next world.” 4 Assuming then that later Romans did expect a world to come, what exactly were they expecting? It is no exaggeration to say that the scriptures did not give them much to go on. Most of the Old Testament writers had no such expectation, while the New Testamant texts are, to say the least, somewhat laconic concerning “the last things.” He who would say something about them was pretty well obliged to “make it up” from somewhere or other, either by extrapolating on the slight hints given in the scriptures or by borrowing from some other tradition (both of which the church appears to have left men free to do). It is therefore hardly surprising to discover that the tales demonstrate only a little consensus on the question of the last things and some quite amazing disparities. Take for instance the question of whether the prayers of the living could benefit the departed. Here some tales follow the paradigm of the story of Dives and Lazarus5 and the answer is decidedly no, for “between us and you there is a great gulf fixed.” Thus a daughter burns her hand trying in vain to rescue her mother from the flames.6 Another story tells how a religious sister once fell into an ecstasy in which she was conducted by two elderly persons in white, first before the heavenly throne, then to a place of punishment. There, in a river of fire, she saw many sisters she knew. They begged her to pray for their release from their ( just) punishment; which she did, but in vain. Whereupon the suffering sisters prayed her to return and warn the other sisters what awaited them if they did not amend their (shockingly) sinful lives.7 Per contra, Paul the Simple had a sinful disciple who died. Paul prayed to God and the Mother of God to show him the disciple. He saw him, carried by two figures, completely petrified and inactive. Then he had a second vision of him, released and claiming that it was due to Paul’s prayers that he was released from the chain of his sins; this was confirmed by the Mother of God.8 Here is an anecdote of Gregory the Great: “Once when he was traveling the paved road, he came to a deliberate halt and offered a fervent prayer to the Lord, the lover of souls, for the sins of Emperor Trajan to be forgiven. He immediately heard a voice carried to him from God saying: ‘I have heard your prayer and do grant Trajan forgiveness. But make sure you never again offer a prayer to me for the impious.’” 9 Thus we have tales taking diametrically opposed positions on the question of whether prayers for the dead 4 Ioannis Skylitzae synopsis historiarum, ed. I. Thurn, CFHB 5 (Berlin-New York, 1973), 28.3–4: th` n me´ llousan ajna´ stasin ajqetw'n kai` ta` ejkei'qen ejphggelme´ na ajgaqa` diasu´ rwn (ajna´ stasi´n te th` n me´ llousan kai` ta` ejkei'qen ajpistw'n ajgaqa´ Ú Theophanes Continuatus, ed. I. Bekker, CSHB (Bonn, 1838), 49.1–2, PG 109:61D.) 5 Luke 16:19–31. 6 W064, BHG 1322t / W065, BHG 1318f. 7 This is a long story; W852, BHG 1322ib, visio monialis cuiusdam, clearly a replay of Luke 16:19–31. 8 W626, in the Apophthegmata patrum: collectio systematica (hereafter Sys), of which no complete edition exists so far. Pelagius and John (hereafter P&J) provide a Latin translation of the earliest extant version (6th–7th century), PL 73:851–1052. In “Histoires des solitaires ´egyptiens,” ROL 12 (1907) through 18 (1913), passim, F. Nau (hereafter N) published the Greek text of the first four hundred tales found in cod. Paris. Coislin. 126 with French translation of tales 1–215. The first of three volumes of a critical edition of Sys is now available: Les Apophtegmes des Pe`res, Collection systematique, chapitres I–IX, ed. J.-C. Guy and B. Flusin, SC 387 (Paris, 1993). W626 is P&J 10.50, Sys 10.72, N599. 9 [Pseudo] John of Damascus (? Michael Syncellus, 761–846 ?), de his qui in fide dormierunt, PG 95:261D– 264A.

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were thought to be of any avail, even though the consensus of the church at large generally supposed that they were. Here is another dissonance: of the stories attributed to the tenth-century bishop Paul of Monemvasia, No. 13 bears striking resemblance to No. 2 in several ways, both in content and in form. But there is also a very important difference, which almost renders it unthinkable that they are the work of the same author. In the next world as portrayed in the second tale the protagonists are a heavenly eunuch and some “black-faced ones” (aijqi´ope").10 But the next world of No. 13 is a very different affair; only angels have to do with the heroine of that story.11 The Byzantine church had no precise eschatology to be sure and, within certain limits, the individual was free to form his or her own opinions about death, judgment, heavenly rewards, and infernal punishments. Hence a great variety of beliefs sprang up concerning “the last things,” and this variety is well illustrated in the tales. On two points, however, the tales are unanimous: first, that death is inevitable; second, that it does not necessarily come “like a thief in the night.” 12 More than a dozen tales echo the topos already found in Athanasios’ Life of Antony13 (which is in so many ways both radical and germane to the tales-tradition) that righteous souls, and even not-sorighteous souls if they were not beyond redemption, could have a premonition of death. Palladius (for instance) encountered a monastery of women at Antinoe¨, one of whose members, after sixty years in the ascetic life, was advised by the local patron saint of her impending death.14 Michael, priest of the Great Lavra of St. Sabas for more than fifty years, knew the precise day on which he would die,15 and at Isidore’s monastery in the Thebaid, not one of the thousand monks ever got sick, “but when came the translation [meta´ qesi"] of each, he announced it to all, laid down and died.” 16 There are many similar incidents elsewhere; nor was it only professional religious or even the righteous who were forewarned. The second narrative of Paul of Monemvasia (already mentioned) is the tale of “The man who was called to account three days before his death,” told to Paul by a friend with whom he was speaking “on the subject of the departing of the soul and of how it is called to account by unclean spirits”—as though this were a frequent topic of conversation in tenth-century Monemvasia. It is a fascinating story of a man who, by stealing a paper, had effectively cheated his mother out of a slave in the hope of money (which he never received). In a vision he is apprised that death is imminent, but he is to be allowed time for repentance and amendment of life.17 The devil appears to Antony first as a dragon, then as a black child: th' fantasi´a me´ la" aujtv' fai´netai pai'", Vita Antonii, ed. G. J. M. Bartelink, Athanase d’Alexandrie, Vie d’Antoine, SC 400 (Paris, 1994), 6.1; see Bartelink’s important note on this first appearance of the black demon in monastic literature (p. 147 n. 2). 11 J. Wortley, Les re´cits ´edifiants de Paul, ´eveˆque de Monembasie, et d’autres auteurs (hereafter PMB) (Paris, 1987), pp. 36–41, 104–8; Eng. trans. and notes, J. Wortley, The Spiritually Beneficial Tales of Paul, Bishop of Monembasia and of Other Authors (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1996), pp. 68–71, 108–11. 12 1Thess. 5:2, 2Peter 3:10. 13 Vita Antonii, 89.2 14 Historia Lausiaca (hereafter HL), by Palladios, bishop of Hellenopolis, ed. E. C. Butler, The Lausiac History of Palladius, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1904), 3–169, chap. 60 and nn. 103–105; W220, Synaxarium CP, 695.35. 15 G. Garitte, “‘Histoires ´edifiantes’ ge´orgiennes,” Byzantion 36 (1966): 396–423, no. 30, W954. 16 HME 17.3 17 PMB, no. 3, W703, BHG 1449f. 10

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The evidence of the tales may seem to suggest that later Romans thought that death was reversible. This is scarcely surprising since the Gospel passage where Christ commands his disciples to continue his healing ministry includes a command to “raise the dead,” 18 which the Apostle Paul (for one) is said to have obeyed.19 There are at least twenty-five tales that imply the resuscitation of the dead in one way or another. Those raised up include: eight corpses (unspecified, in one case a skull only), seven monks, three children, three maidens, two entombed (probably the same tale), one officer, one layman, one priest, one merchant, and one pagan mistress. Of those who are credited with raising the dead, the great majority, fourteen of them at least, are monks. There are also one bishop and three priests, one said to be indignus, another ebriosus, but it was mainly monks, and particularly holy monks at that, who were credited with the charisma of raising the dead. However, on closer inspection, the evidence is by no means conclusive that the dead were ever resuscitated. It is significant that some reports of dead-raising are unwontedly guarded. Thus, for instance: “The word went around [ejxh'lqe fh´ mh] that [Macarius the Egyptian] raised up a dead man in order to convince a heretic who refused to believe in the resurrection of the body, and this rumour still circulates in the desert.” 20 The story of Sisoes indicates both reluctance and reticence: A secular person came to Sisoes with his son, who died on the way. The father prostrated himself before this abba, leaving the boy’s corpse lying there. Thinking the child had merely failed to get up again after the act of obeisance, Sisoes commanded him to arise; which he did, and went out, alive again. Sisoes was distressed when he realized what had happened, for he did not intend to raise the dead (ajkou´ sa" de` oJ ge´ rwn ejluph´ qh⭈ ouj ga` r h“qele tou'to gene´ sqai). He charged everybody to keep silent concerning this matter for as long as he lived.21 It would appear that sometimes the fathers’ compassion got the better of their discretion. A young disciple of Gelasios was kicked to death by the cellarer for eating a fish he was set to guard; then Abba Gelasios restored the youth to life.22 Now, with respect to all the foregoing instances it would be well to recall the dominical words at the raising of Jairus’ daughter: to` paidi´on oujk ajpe´ qanen ajlla` kaqeu´ dei (Mark 5:39); in none of them was the patient unquestionably dead. It is already clear that not many of the supposed raisings from the dead were rewards for piety, presumably because the greater good would indeed be to remain undisturbed. Some of the raisings serve an overtly worldly purpose. Theodoret of Cyrrhus (for instance) tells how Abba Palladius, finding the corpse of a merchant at his door, urged the dead young man to explain, whereupon the corpse sat up, looked around, and pointed to the murderer, who was found to have a bloody dagger in his possession.23 And this: Matt. 10:8: nekrou` " ejgei´rete, cf. nekroi` ejgei´rontai Matt. 11:5 and Luke 7:22, also the dominical examples of the raising of Lazarus (John 11) and of the Widow of Nain’s son (Luke 7:11–17). 19 Acts 20:9. 20 HL 17.11, ed. Butler, p. 46, 17–19, and Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica, 13.14.1–2. 21 W444, Apophthegmata patrum, Collectio alphabetica (hereafter A/B), ed. and trans. J.-B. Cotelier (1686), PG 65:71–440: Sisoes 18. 22 W405, A/B Gelasius 3. 23 W866, Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus, Filo´ qeo" JIstori´a / Historia religiosa (hereafter HR), ed. with French trans. P. Canivet and A. Leroy-Molinghen, Histoire des moines de Syrie, 2 vols. SC 234, 259 (Paris, 18

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Macarius the Egyptian was one of seven monks who once went to work on the harvest. Among the gleaners there was a widow who was weeping all the time because her husband had died in possession of a sum of money (entrusted to him) which was now lost. She and her children were in danger of being sold into slavery if the money was not paid over. So Macarius and the brothers prayed at her husband’s grave, asking him where the money might be. “In my house, at the foot of the bed,” came the dead man’s answer. Macarius told him to sleep on until the day of resurrection. The money was found and repaid; the children (who had apparently already been enslaved) were set free.24 There is a third story, very similar to this one, in which the dead person (a girl in this case) not only speaks, but appears—alive: Abba Spyridon had a virgin daughter who shared her father’s piety. A friend of the family committed an object of great value to her. In order to ensure its safety, she hid it in the ground. A little later she died, then came the one who had committed the object to her care. Unable to find the girl, he came to her father . . . who went to his daughter’s tomb. He prayed God to show him the promised resurrection ahead of time, and he was not disappointed. The daughter immediately appeared, alive, to her father, indicated the place where the object was lying, and then disappeared.25 Although the persons in these instances appear undoubtedly to be dead, it could not be argued that the dead were restored to life; merely that communication was established with them for a brief moment (and a specific purpose), something that may present fewer problems for those who “look for the resurrection of the dead” than for those who do not. Hence here there are no pejorative connotations such as Saul incurred when he had recourse to the Witch of Endor in order to converse with the deceased Samuel (1 Sam. 28). Although not always so blatant or as worldly as the cases mentioned so far, most of the supposed raisings-from-the-dead serve some kind of practical purpose. This, however, might not be so in the well-known story of the abba who resurrected a departed brother in order to bid him farewell: “Abba Peter, priest of the Lavra of our holy father Saint Sabas, told us that when Hagiodoulos was higoumen of the Lavra of the blessed Gerasimos, one of the brethren there died without the elder knowing of it. When the precentor struck the wood[-en signal] for all the brethren to mourn together and send the dead man on his way, the elder came and saw the body of the brother lying in the church. He grieved at not having been able to take leave of him before he died. Going up to the bier, he said to the dead man: ‘Rise up and greet me, brother,’ and the dead man rose up and greeted him. Then the elder said to him: ‘Take your rest now until the Son of God shall come and raise you up again.’” 26 This anecdote is cited verbatim in order 1977–79), 7, 1–3. See also Euergetinos, Synagoge 1.10.34–36 and cf. Chaucer, “The Prioress’ Tale.” In Apuleius, Metamorphoses, 2.28–30, a priest of Isis raises a dead man to accuse his murderer. Intimation by a dream is more common, e.g., ibid., 8.8 and 9.31. 24 W426, A/B Macarius the Egyptian 7, PG 65:265AC. 25 W449, A/B Spyridon 2, PG 65 417D–420A ⫽ Socrates, Historia ecclesiastica, 1.12, PG 67:104–5. 26 W257, John Moschus, Pratum spirituale (hereafter PS) ed. J. P. Migne (after Fronto Ducaeus and J.-B. Cotelier) with the Latin trans. of Ambrose Traversari (1346–1439), PG 87:2851–3112: chap. 11. A very similar narrative is found elesewhere, among the string of tales appended to the longer (unpublished) version of The Life of Saint Marcian the Œconomos of Constantinople, BHG 1033c,d. The present writer is responsible for all translations in this article.

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to illustrate some of the difficulties arising when beneficial tales are used as evidence of beliefs. The Bollandists, who first clearly distinguished a separate genre of the narratio animae utilis, have also from time to time attempted a definition of it. Hippolyte Delehaye said the tales were “nouvelles destine´es `a mettre en lumie`re une doctrine religieuse,” 27 a particularly apt definition given the double meaning of the epithet religieux. Quoting this definition, Franc¸ois Halkin went further: “Sans attache nette avec aucun pays ni aucune ´epoque de´termine´e [les re´cits] laissent dans un anonymat sans relief les personnages fictifs dont ils rapportent les exploits.” 28 Elsewhere the same scholar said that dihgh´ sei" yucwfelei'" are “des sortes de paraboles de´veloppe´es dont les he´ros ne sont pas toujours imaginaires . . . qui incarnent pour ainsi dire en un exemple frappant, voire paradoxal, un enseignement the´orique difficile et transcendant.” 29 Here surely is a salutary warning that we are no more to take the circumstances of a tale “for real” than we should take the scenery and trappings in the theater: we should rather look for that “enseignement the´orique difficile et transcendant” which is the real point of the story: in this case, probably that Christian filadelfi´a is stronger than death. Whether the corpse was actually resuscitated is rather beside the point. Since, however, the later Romans looked for the resurrection of the dead, it is scarcely surprising that they thought it possible for the dead to be seen by or to communicate with the living, and there is no lack of evidence that this was so. Abba Pambo (for instance) said he saw two deceased rich brothers-become-monks, both standing before God in Paradise (this was to settle an argument about whether the ascetic one or the hospitable brother would be greater in the Kingdom).30 A recurring topos in later stories concerns a person who has either departed this life under some sort of ecclesiastical ban or been marooned in life by the death of the person who had banned him. Since it was held that only he who bound could loose—this is the usual interpretation of the famous “Petrine clause” 31 in the tales—one or the other of the two has to return from the dead and set matters to rights.32 Such is the curious tale de arca martyris concerning one who dies a martyr’s death but who remains excommunicate at the time of his execution. He is accorded a decent burial in a church, but his coffin removes itself from the church each time the deacon cries: “All the catechumens withdraw”—until the excommunication is finally lifted by a posthumous reconciliation.33 Monks and martyrs have no monopoly of this topos: there is the charming “lay version” concerning two brothers, one of whom died while they were at enmity with each other. The survivor was sent to a centurion at Constantinople who H. Delehaye, “Un groupe de re´cits ‘utiles `a l’aˆme,’” in Me´langes Bidez (Brussels, 1934), 257. F. Halkin, “La vision de Kaioumos et le sort ´eternel de Philentolos Olympiou (BHG 1322w),” AB 63 (1945): 56. 29 Recherches et documents d’hagiographie byzantine, SubsHag 51 (Brussels, 1971), 261, 303. 30 W185, HL 14: Pae¨sios and Isaias. 31 kai` o’ eja` n dh´ sh" ejpi` th'" gh'" e“stai dedeme´ non ejn toi'" oujranoi'" ktl. Matt. 16:19. 32 W001, BHG 1322e, de vindicta diaconi et presbyteri seu miraculo CP. patrato, a Niceta Chartoulario, W005, BHG 1322ea, de diacono quem presbyter ligaverat, and W706, PMB06, BHG 1449g, de sacerdote a divinis suspenso are of this order. 33 W039, BHG 1449s, de monacho excommunicato et martyre, W040, de arca martyris (a): BHG 1322u.ua (summary in Michael Glykas, Annales, ed. I. Bekker, CSHB (Bonn, 1836), 524.15–525.8) (b): BHG 1322v ⫽ Anastasios the Sinaite, ed. F. Nau, “Le texte grec du moine Anastase sur les saints pe`res du Sinaı¨” [1–40 ⫹ appendix], OC 2 (1902): 58–89, and “Le texte grec des re´cits utiles `a l’aˆme d’Anastase (le Sinaı¨te),” OC 3 (1903): 56–75, tale no. 54. 27 28

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at first denied that he had any ability to be of assistance. But, finally, he took the surviving brother to the Great Church by night. The doors opened at his prayers; the dead brother appeared, and a reconciliation was effected. A subsidiary point of this story—not by any means uncommon in this monastic literature—is that not only monks are holy men.34 The tales provide examples of deceased persons appearing to the living when the departed is in need of something, for example, a decent burial in the case of the grazer (bosko´ ") of Skopelos; a long-overdue new church for St. Julian, or a meeting with a sixthcentury pope of Alexandria—requested by Pope Leo the Great.35 There are also cases of the dead appearing in order to repay debts, as in the story of an officer (magistriano´ ", agens in rebus) on imperial service who, finding a dead man lying naked, clothed him with one of his own garments. Later he damaged a foot; amputation seemed to be necessary as the foot was turning black. The doctors planned to operate the following morning but, by night, one came who, by anointing and exercising the foot, restored it to health. The healer was none other than the naked cadaver whom the officer had covered, still wearing the garment he had donated. The man had been sent by Christ to reward the officer for his charity.36 (The western legend of St. Martin of Tours and his cloak is one of several manifestations of this topos.) There are even stories which indicate that the dead were capable of communicating with the living in writing, on occasion. This is not so surprising as it may seem, for at least eighteen stories mention the use of writing in one way or another, clear signs of a literate society. Thus the fine story of Synesius’ conversion, too long unfortunately to cite verbatim: A bishop persuaded a pagan philosopher to be baptized, but the latter doubted very much whether there was such a thing as eternal life and whether alms really are a loan to God, repaid a hundredfold. (“He that hath pity on the poor lendeth unto the Lord and that which he hath given will he repay unto him again” 37 is a recurrent theme of the tales.) In spite of his doubts, he gave the bishop three hundred pounds of gold as “a loan to God,” for which he demanded a receipt. When he died, at his own request he was buried with this receipt in his hand. Later, he summoned the bishop to his tomb to take the receipt; it was endorsed: “sum repaid one hundredfold”—and also that he had attained eternal life.38 It was axiomatic and scripturally attested that Christ would “come again . . . to judge both the quick and the dead.” Of the second coming there is very little, indeed almost nothing, in the literature we are examining. Concerning the last judgment the Gospel gives a very clear lead in the narrative of the Sheep and the Goats,39 yet this is rarely W051, BHG 1318y, de duobus fratribus post alterius mortem reconciliatis; this may be an abbreviation of a longer tale, for the visitors enter (chap. 5) eij" ta` " ejxwte´ ra" pu´ la", but in leaving are said only to pass through ta` " ejndote´ ra". 35 W301 PS 084; W335, PS 146, BHG 1440km, de Eulogio Alexandrino et ecclesia Juliani; W337, PS 148, BHG 982e, visio Theodori episcopi. 36 N038, W528, BHG 1445x, de magistriano et cadavere nudo, P&J 11.2. 37 dani´zei Qev' oJ ejlew'n ptwco´ n, kata` de` to` do´ ma aujtou' ajntapadw´ sei aujtv', Prov. 19:17. 38 W049, BHG 1322r etc. and BHG 1442, PS 195, de Synesio et Evagrio. On the conversion of Synesios, see Evagrios, Historia ecclesiastica, 1.C.15, ed. J. Bidez and L. Parmentier (London, 1898), p. 25; Synaxarium CP, 774.42–776, and George the Monk, Chronicon, ed. de Boor, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1904), 2:676.12–678.15. 39 Matt. 25:31–46. 34

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followed in the tales. This may be because it implies a final and general judgment at the end of time, toward which the consensus of the church at large was already tending by the end of the fourth century. The tales, however, generally opt for an immediate and individual judgment, the Gospel model for which would be the the story of Dives and Lazarus,40 well supplied with a surprisingly rich variety of detail. One tale even suggests a two-tier arbitration, that is, for monks and laymen: An unsatisfactory monk whose mother dies has a vision of her being taken to the judgment meta` tw'n krinome´ nwn. She is amazed that he who had “gone to save his soul” should have been selected for judgment too: kai` su eij" to` n to´ pon tou'ton ejlqei'n katakri´qh";41 On the other hand, Abba Silvanus had a curious vision of the judgment, one of the few that does echo the lo´ gion of the Sheep and the Goats. He saw many monks going to perdition while many secular persons were entering the Kingdom—a further reminder that monks have no monopoly on holiness.42 Another important exception and a curious one is the narrative de sorte animarum visio presbyteri Patmensis in which Abba John of Patmos tells the long story of one who related how he came to be a monk. He was a priest; not sinful, but negligent. He fell sick and was twenty days without food. Two men dressed in white came and took him before the court of the twelve apostles, Peter presiding.43 He was ordered to witness the sufferings of the damned. This was followed by a vision of the saints; there he saw the Mother of God praying to God (a pillar of flame) to have mercy on the world, and also many angels. His companion told him that he could be with the blessed if he followed the directions of Abba Philip and became a monk, which he did.44 Usually in the tales the judgment is not portrayed as a final hearing, but as a dispute immediately following death. The feuding protagonists are the forces of light and darkness respectively: the question at stake is whether the departing soul will be borne aloft by the angels or swept down to the lower regions by demons. The earliest intimation of such a confrontation is in a vision of Antony the Great whose Life by Athanasios is, as already stated, an integral part of the tales-tradition: “A whole year long I prayed for the place of the righteous and of the sinners to be revealed to me.45 I saw a great giant, high as the clouds, black and with his hands stretched up toward heaven, and below him there was a lake the size of the sea. And I saw souls, flying like birds. Those who flew free of his hands and head were saved, while those who were struck by his hands were falling into the lake. Then a voice came to me saying: ‘Those you see flying up are the souls of the righteous; they are saved in Paradise. But the others, the ones being led off down to Hades, are they who followed the desires of the flesh and bore grudges.’” 46 The black Luke 16:19–31. Sys. 3.38, P&J 3.20, probably a very old tale as it is attributed to Pachomios, Oeuvres, ed. L. T. Lefort, 2 vols., CSCO 160 (Louvain, 1956), 1:28–29. 42 W445, A/B Silvanus 2. 43 Presumably inspired by the saying: “When the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt. 19:28; cf. Luke 22:30), but the discrepancies are obvious. 44 W880, BHG 1322zi; see also HME 8.33. 45 Thus Macarius the Egyptian (the Great) of Scete: “Then [the power of God] begins to reveal before the heart the afflictions of those who are being punished and many other things . . .” Letter 1.13, ed. P. Ge´hin, “Le dossier macarien de l’Atheniensis gr. 2492,” Recherches augustiniennes 31 (1999): 89–147, p. 107, 79–86. 46 HL 21.16–17, shorter version in Vita Antonii, 66. 40 41

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giant is scarcely ever mentioned again in the tales.47 In fact this whole vision seems to be a remnant of a different tradition (as yet unrecognized) in which the ascending souls have no strength but their own to evade the captor and to fail to do so is to be cast into a watery (not a fiery) hell. It is, however, a second vision of Antony that furnishes what became the usual scenario: a vision in which he felt himself being taken out of the body and up into the air by “some guides” (oJdhgou´ menon uJpo´ tinwn). Then he saw some “bitter and cruel ones” (pikrou` " kai` deinou´ " tina") standing in the air and endeavoring to prevent him from mounting up. When “the guides” withstood them, those others asked them whether he was their subject. They wanted an account of him from his birth, but Antony’s guides (oiJ to` n jAntw´ nion oJdhgou'nte") refused, saying to them: “The Lord has written off the period from his birth, but you may demand an account of [his life] from the time when he became a monk and dedicated himself to God.” Since they accused him but could get no conviction, the way was made clear and without impediment for him [to ascend].” 48 Although this experience concerns only Antony’s monastic life, all the elements of many subsequent visions of the last judgment are here. As noted above, rarely in the tales is the judgment portrayed as a board of inquiry or tribunal but rather as a verbal or physical tussle or tug-of-war between the forces of light and the powers of darkness; a struggle that takes place, not at some indeterminate time in the future, but promptly at the hour of death, even around the deathbed of the agonisant. Thus a resuscitated taxeotes recalled how black-faced-ones (aijqi´ope") and others clad in white had battled for possession of him, the latter finally wrestling him from the hands of the former so that (in this case) he could return to the body and repent; black versus white.49 The demons are frequently referred to as aijqi´ope", especially the ones associated with pornei´a.50 Angels are invariably clothed in white, sometimes with faces shining like the sun, occasionally said to be eunuchs or imperial officers. Thus a man granted three days for repentance and amendment of life says to his confessor: “Are you blind and could not see that imperial personage and the illustrious men who accompanied him? Nor the black-faced-ones who were standing at the door? . . . That eunuch who was speaking with me just now, whose face was brighter than the sun and whose clothing glistened like light? When he came here with his illustrious terrifying men, there came some evil-looking black-faced-ones with eyes like fire and they stood at the door. They were accusing me, saying what I had done and what I had left undone.” 51 It should be noted in passing that the angels did not always show up at the moment of death; it was not worth their while if the state of the departing soul was thought to be hopeless. Thus a monk standing at the gates of a rich man who was dying saw the arrival of black horses with black riders carrying fiery wands. The riders went in and the patient began to cry out: “Lord, help me and be merciful to me.” The riders said: “Now the sun is going down, you remember God. Why did you not seek him when it was first rising? There is not the slightest bit of help or comfort for you now,” and off they went, unopBut see “The Life of Abba Theodosios the Solitary,” W290, PS 066. Vita Antonii, 65.2–5. 49 W010, BHG 1318, 1318a, Anastasios the Sinaite tale A40. 50 See Guy, Les Apophtegmes des Pe`res, 1:244–45 n.1. 51 PMB 03, W703, BHG 1449f. 47 48

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posed, with his wretched soul.52 That, however, is an exceptional case; generally the angels do appear and a genuine discussio or altercation occurs. Sometimes a pair of scales is introduced to settle the argument. Such is the case in the vision of a doctor who had attended a repentant thief on his deathbed at the Sampson hospital in Constantinople during the reign of Maurice (582–602). He saw black-faced-ones who cast accusations against the deceased thief in one of the scales while two angels loaded his tear-soaked kerchief onto the other scale—and thus gained his soul.53 Scales also appear in the tale of the sister of Daniel of Scete: she went astray, was reclaimed, and then died. Daniel subsequently had a dream of a dorufo´ ro" and his company trying to take her soul, but a ruler (a“rcwn—a rare reference to a judge) summoned the angel of repentance to give evidence. First this angel read out all her sins and her sufferings. Then he presented her tears and the blood from her feet (when she followed Daniel back into the desert barefoot) in a receptacle. These were weighed against her sins and found to be heavier. In spite of the demons’ complaints, she was assigned a place of light in the mansions of the saints.54 These two instances of the use of scales are of particular interest here. Scales are mentioned from time to time in the Judaic tradition; Nebuchadnezzar had been “weighed in the balance and found wanting” (Dan. 5:27); Job prays: “Let me be weighed in an even balance” (Job 31:6); and there is the enigmatic mention in Psalm 61:10; but there is no suggestion of the use of scales at a final judgment, nor is there in the Gospels. Per contra, scales figure very prominently in the ancient Egyptian religion as a means of testing the departed soul when it comes into the judgment hall of Osiris. There too is Horus “who leads the deceased into the presence of Osiris and makes an appeal to his father that the deceased may be allowed to enjoy the benefits enjoyed by all who are ‘true of voice’ and justified in the judgement.” 55 The female deity Maat would also be there: “During the trial of the deceased soul, Maat was always present. In some drawings her feather sat on top the scales to guarantee fairness, and the heart of the deceased was always weighed on the balance against the feather. If the heart were found to balance perfectly with truth and justice—being neither too heavy nor too light for it—the dead person was held to have passed the first test and to be nearing immortality.” 56 Wallis Budge (whose words these are) long since opined that Christians of Coptic expression used their Egyptian religious traditions to fill in the vacuums in their Judaeo-Christian beliefs, and he provided at least one striking example of them appropriating Egyptian notions of what they (wrongly) supposed to be hell. He concluded: “How far the Copts reproduced unconsciously the views which had been held by their ancestors for thousands of years cannot be said, but even after allowance has been made for this possibility, there remains still to be explained the large number of beliefs and views which seem to W029, BHG 1322hi, Sys 20.14, N492, de morte divitis, ed. A. Amante, Didaskaleion 1 (1912): 535. W863, BHG 1450m, de latrone converso [bis], Anastasios the Sinaite, D02, In Ps. vi, PG 89:1112A–1116B. 54 W467, Daniel of Scete [unnumbered] BHG 2102e, de sorore Danielis; fuller Syriac text ed. and trans. S. P. Brock, AB 113 (1995): 270–80 gives discussio between the archon and the black-faced-one. W482, ed. Th. Nissen, “Unbekannte Erza¨hlungen aus dem Pratum Spirituale,” BZ 38 (1938): 351–76, no. 4, BHG 1440r, de moniali paenitenti and W961, BHG 1438r, cod. Athen. 513, fol. 198rv, de moniali meretrice, are essentially the same story. 55 E. A. Wallis Budge, Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life (London, 1899), 72. 56 R. A. Armour, Gods and Myths in Ancient Egypt (Cairo 1986), 164. 52 53

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have been the peculiar product of the Egyptian Christian imagination.” 57 There are aspects of the tales-tradition (the judgment by scales being one of them) that might well derive from traditional Egyptian beliefs, but there are others that apparently cannot. The deathbed confrontation of eunuchs/angels and aijqi´ope"/demons is an obvious example. Is this a “peculiar product of the Egyptian Christian imagination” or might it derive from a dualistic (Mesopotamian?) source rather than an Egyptian one?58 Consider the tale of two brothers who once agreed to become monks. They lived apart for several years until one of them fell ill. In an ecstasy, he saw angels trying to take him and his brother to heaven, but opposing demons stood in the way (kai` ajph´ nthsan hJmi'n aiJ ajntikei´menai duna´ mei", a“peiroi tv' plh´ qei kai` foberai` tv' ei“dei). These could not prevail, for: “Great is the assurance which purity confers,” one of the angels was heard to remark (mega´ lh parrhsi´a hJ aJgnei´a).59 It is a clear case of darkness versus light, flesh versus spirit, pornei´a versus aJgnei´a, and so forth. Hence the angels usually do get possession of the soul of the departed in the case of the truly righteous and, once free of the black-facedones, joyfully bear it aloft. This is witnessed to over and over again by those who claim to have seen the souls of the righteous being carried to heaven by choirs of angels.60 In some instances, certain souls whose righteousness is somewhat questionable only escape the black-faced-ones by the skin of their teeth. This is usually the case when a particular virtue is held to atone for shortcomings in other departments, echoing Christ’s words to “the woman which was a sinner”: “Her sins which are many are forgiven; for she loved much.” 61 There is something of this in the story of a woman whose daughter had been wronged by Emperor Zeno (474–491). She was always imprecating the Mother of God to avenge her; the Holy Mother appeared to her and said she would like to oblige her, but “[Zeno’s] right hand prevents me.” The explanation of this is that the emperor in question was given to great acts of mercy, that is, to generous almsgiving (h«n ga` r ejleh´ mwn pa´ nu).62 The lesson here is clearly that almsgiving can “cover a multitude of sins.” 63 We learn from the following story that the fear of death was a powerful incentive to almsgiving. There was a rich man in Alexandria who fell ill and, fearing death, he took thirty pounds in gold and gave it to the poor. Then he recovered and regretted what he had done. He 57 Wallis Budge, Egyptian Ideas, 110–15. Athanasios portrays Antony having to stipulate very forcibly that his corpse is not to be subject to the Egyptian tradition of embalming (Vita Antonii, chap. 90), which gives some indication of the extent to which Christians were engulfed by pagan practices and beliefs. 58 It is certainly not to be found in the Gospels: witness the lo´ gion of the Great Net: “at the end of the world the angels shall come forth and sever the wicked from among the just and shall cast them into the furnace of fire”: Matt. 13:49. 59 W630, N622, Sys 11.62, P&J 11.24a, cited here from Euergetinos, Synagoge, 1.10.2. 60 Antony the Great saw the soul of Amoun the Nitriote carried to heaven by a great crowd, Vita Antonii, chap. 60, Pachomios saw angels taking away the soul of Silvanus, Paralipomena de SS. Pachomio et Theodoro, chaps. 4, 13, ed. F. Halkin, Le Corpus Athe´nien de Saint Pachoˆme, Cahiers d’Orientalisme 2 (Geneva, 1982), 76– 78; Benedict saw the soul of Germanus, bishop of Capua, Dialogues Gre´goire le Grand, ed. A. de Vogu ¨ ´e, trans. Paul Antin, 3 vols. Sources chre´tiennes, nos. 251, 260, 265 (Paris, 1978–1980), 2.35.3, vol. 1, p. 238; other examples are numerous. 61 Luke 7:37 and 47. 62 W351, PS 175, BHG 1322, de Zenone imperatore. 63 1 Peter 4:8 says ajga´ ph kalu´ ptei plh'qo" aJmartiw'n, suggesting that the ambiguity that attaches to our word charity is no new thing.

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had a devout friend with whom he shared his regrets. The other replied: “You ought to be glad that you presented that money to Christ.” The first man was not convinced, so he continued: “Look, here are thirty pounds” (for he too was rich). “Come now to the church of St. Menas, declare: ‘It is not I, but this man here who has performed the vow’ and take the money.” He made the declaration when they came to St. Menas’—and took the money. But just as he was coming out of the door he died. They told the original owner of the pieces of gold to take what was his, but he said: “By the Lord, I will do no such thing, for from the moment I gave them to Christ they are his; let them be given to the poor.” 64

That almsgiving, plus confession to a priest, are the surest way of escaping the clutches of the demons is the main point of a vision of Macarius the Egyptian. He sees angels descending and ascending bearing human souls, which grimy beings endeavour to snatch down. At the control post (telw´ nion) of sexual sin (pornei´a) the angels are challenged for a soul they carry; they call the man’s guardian angel to witness that, sinner though he be, he did make a full confession to a priest before death; hence he is allowed through. Then comes a eunuch of whom the demons say: “He did many wicked things from his youth up, things unbecoming of him as a Christian and as a eunuch: fornication, adultery, and defiling himself with those who work the sin of Sodom,” but by almsgiving and confession he has gained admittance. A pious soul comes next and is joyfully received into heaven, and lastly a steward who has strangled himself: he is led off to hell.65 Some sins could be compensated for by good words, but not all. This is demonstrated by the story de eleemosynario fornicatore: There was a man who was equally given both to almsgiving and to pornei´a (which usually means any kind of illicit sexual activity, in thought, word, or deed) right to the day of his death. A dispute arose concerning his fate and, when prayer was made, it was revealed to a solitary (e“gkleisto") in a vision that the man was saved from hell but barred from heaven. So let no man say: “Even though I am a lecherous man, my salvation is assured because I give alms.” (ka‘n porneu´ sw, poiw' ejlehmosu´ nhn kai` sw´ zomai).66 Presumably this man could have saved his soul by adding confession to a priest to his almsgiving, but then he would have had to refrain from his disorderly life in order to validate his confession. The point here appears to be not that the sin of pornei´a was in itself inexcusable, but that his persistence in it rendered it so. If the worst came to the worst and the demons made off with a soul, the situation was still not entirely without hope. The beneficent presence of the female deity Maat at the trial of the departed Egyptian has already been noted; the Mother of God is frequently portrayed as intercessor for the deceased Christian in some tales. These for the most part deal with cases where a person, once condemned, is sent back to earth and given a second chance. Thus Anna of Constantinople, standing in a place where there was “much weeping and wailing and ceaseless gnashing of teeth,” prayed to the all-holy Mother of God: “Have mercy on me and deliver me from this gloomy predicament so that I might escape and repent in sincerity.” Then she was informed that the Mother of 64 W531, N047, Johannes Monachus, “Liber de Miraculis,” ed. M. Huber, Sammlung mittellateinischer Texte 7 (Heidelberg, 1913), no. 17, George the Monk, Chronicon, 4.231, ed. de Boor, 678.16–683.2, PG 110:841A. 65 W719, BHG 999n, A/B Macarius the Egyptian 2, PG 34:224–29, de angelo custode, bis. 66 W062 BHG 1322y, de eleemosynario fornicatore sub Germano patriarcha. There is a Cypriot version of this tale, W504, BHG 1322w, de Philentolo fornicatore, and yet a third version, BHG 1322xd, cod. Vat. S. Petri C 149, fols. 253v–255, which I have not yet seen.

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God had acceded to her request; she was to return to her body in order to repent in sincerity and make peace with her brothers. In two months’ time she would be summoned again, which indeed she was.67 Clerical negligence could account for one’s escape from the pit. In the Dialogues (a portion of which consists of Latin dihgh´ sei" yucwfelei'"), Gregory the Great tells of a priest named Severus who, when summoned to attend a dying man, finished pruning his vine before going; meanwhile the man died. As the priest wept before the corpse, it revived. The man told how fearful (taetri) men, with insupportable fire issuing from their mouths and nostrils, took him; and how these were then stopped by a fine-looking youth (pulchrae visionis iuvenis) who said: “Take him back, for Severus is weeping.” Thus the man gained seven days for repentance; on the eighth day he died in peace and joy.68 Failing some such intervention, the condemned soul was doomed to hell. In the tales, Hell is usually portrayed as a river (or lake, Rev. 20:14) of fire. The Gospels refer to “an outer darkness” and also to “a furnace of fire,” in both of which “there is lamentation and gnashing of teeth,” 69 thus in a sense combining the two Jewish “hells” of Gehenna and Sheol. The same conflation is found in some of the tales, as (for instance) in the Tale of the Burnt Hand. There a daughter sees her mother in a dark, gloomy house, up to her neck in the fire.70 In another story, hell is seen as “a dark and noisome place of fire” in which notorious heretics are being tormented.71 Elsewhere a priest of Patmos has a vision of naked men and women in a river of fire, including emperors and empresses who ruled badly and sinfully,72 while, for the Monophysites, there was Emperor Marcian hanging on hooks of fire in the midst of the flames, prey to suffering.73 In the Apocryphal Acts of Thomas (probably of gnostic origin) a resuscitated pagan girl describes her experiences of hell and of a most foul black man who took her into the pit where there was a stench and wheel of fire with souls hanging on it74 —and so it goes on. Yet, grim though the subject may be of the sufferings of the damned, John Moschos has preserved a story that relieves it with a rare shaft of humor. An elder living near the city of Antinoe¨ had a very undiligent monk among his disciples, one who never improved in spite of much exhortation. Then the younger man died, whereupon the elder prayed to have the state of that man’s soul revealed to him. What he saw was a river of fire and the brother up to his neck in it. “Did I not warn you?” he asked him. “Yes,” came the reply, “and it is thanks to you that my head is not suffering.” “What do you mean?” asked the monk. “It is because of your prayers,” the other replied, “that I am standing on the head of a bishop.” 75 W713, PMB 13, BHG 1449k, de mortua ad vitam revocata, 10th century, W644, “The Vision of Romanus Lekapenos” is another good example of the Virgin’s intervention, also one of a tale embodied in a late chronicle, Theophanes Continuatus, 4.4, CSHB, 33:438.20–444.14; PG 109:456C–457C. 68 W390, Gregory the Great, Dialogues, 1.12.1–3, 6th century, Italy. 69 Matt. 8:12, 13:42 and 50. 70 W064, BHG 1322t, Sys 18.35, Euergetinos, Synagoge, 1.9.3 (pp. 140–42), de filia boni patris et malae matris. 71 W267, PS 026, BHG 1450zv, de Theophane nestoriano converso. 72 W880, BHG 1322zi, de sorte animarum visio presbyteri Patmensis. 73 W804, John Rufus, bishop of Maı¨ouma, Plerophoriai (hereafter Pl), ed. F. Nau, with French trans. PO (Paris, 1912), 8:1–161, no. 27, the vision of Peter the scholarios. 74 W928, Acts of Thomas, Act 7:55–57. 75 W279, PS 044, W279. 67

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The tales have far less to tell us about the joys of the blessed than of the discomforts of the damned. Visions of heaven are fairly rare; here is the testimony of Abba Athanasios. One day, this black thought [logismo´ "] came into my mind: what difference does it make whether we fight the fight or not? I fell as though into a trance and one came who said to me: “Follow me.” He led me into a place filled with light and stood me before a door the appearance of which was beyond description. We were hearing what sounded like an innumerable multitude within, singing hymns to God. When we knocked, somebody inside heard us and cried: “What do you want?” My guide replied: “We want to come in.” The other answered, saying to me: “Nobody comes in here who lives negligently [oJ ejn ajmelei´a zw'n]. If you want to come in, go and fight the fight, holding nothing in the vain world to be of any account.” 76

Another monk had a vision in which he saw heaven as a great city (no doubt inspired by Rev. 21) in which the people were wearing different kinds of clothes and had diverse faces. He talked first to a man who had known great poverty and severe sickness in life (he was a leper, lelwbhme´ no"), all of which he had borne with great patience. His reward was gorgeous raiment. Then he spoke to a slightly less well dressed monk who had been faithful to the end; third, to a man wearing simpler raiment who had been honestly and decently married; finally, to two persons in fairly clean garments who had lived very sinful lives, but who repented at the end and, by confession, were received into the city.77 The clothing theme (cf. Rev. 6:11) is taken up in the tale of Sozomen who gave his garment to a poor man whom he found as he went around the squares of Constantinople (mid-4th century.) Subsequently he had a dream of a most beautiful paradise, in which there were men with golden chests that contained all the rich clothing he was going to receive as his reward for the garment he had just given to Christ, a hundredfold.78 Apart from the reference to “Abram’s bosom” (Luke 16:22) and the invitation: “Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matt. 25:34), the Gospels have little to say about heaven. However, given Jesus’ words to the repentant thief: sh´ meron met∆ ejmou' e“sh e´ n tv' paradei´sv (Luke 23:24), it is hardly surprising that heaven is often portrayed as a paradise in the original sense of the word: as a beautiful garden (Old Persian, pairidaeza, a park or enclosure.) When some brothers prayed that they might see to what degree their colleague Paul had attained (eij" poi'a me´ tra e“fqase), they were granted a vision of him in a garden of great variety and charm (para´ deison poiki´lon kai` pa´ nterpnon).79 The daughter of an upright father but of a most disorderly mother was taken first to see her late father. She was led “to a great plain of paradise where there were trees of such variety and beauty defying description, abounding in all kinds of fruit.” 80 Some even succeeded in bringing back souvenirs of paradise. Thus Patermouthios said that he had been corporally transported to paradise where he had seen the saints and where he had tasted the fruits, of which he brought back with him a huge fig. This object was greatly venerated, and the mere fragrance of it was capable of curing disorders.81 Euphrosynos, the despised and lowly cook W326, PS 130; W958 (cod. Paris. grec. 1596, pp. 475–76 is the same story, different persons). W920, BHG 1322k, cod. Paris Supp. grec. 1319, fols. 42v–49, de coronis electorum. 78 W925, BHG 1322s, de Sozomeno eleemosynario. 79 W045 BHG 2363, Paulus monachus hypotacticus. 80 W064, BHG 1322t, Sys 18.35, Euergetinos, Synagoge, 1.9.3 (pp. 140–42), de filia boni patris et malae matris. 81 W158, HME 10.21–23. 76 77

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of a monastery, was seen by a monk (in a dream) to be in charge of a garden of delights, from which he gave the monk a wondrous apple. The following morning the monk found the apple in bed with him; it healed many who partook of it.82 Beyond that, the tales do not have much to tell about heaven. What of those who went neither to heaven nor to hell? That such there were believed to be has already been illustrated by the story de eleemosynario fornicatore, of whom it was attested by a vision that he was saved from hell (by his almsgiving) but barred from heaven by his continued wantonness. The notion that there might be a “middle state” between heaven and hell, a limbo, is borne out by the following tale. There was an elder who was richly endowed with the gift of being able to see into men’s hearts [dioratiko` " pa´ nu], and there was, living in secular society, a virtuous Hebrew, a man of mercy and hospitality, possessed of many great virtues. The elder became aware of the Hebrew’s good works, so he went to him, exhorting and teaching him from the holy scriptures in the hope of persuading him to be baptized. When his coreligionists, the malicious Jews, his wife and children, realized that, after being exhorted at great length, he was almost ready to deny [their beliefs], they cut him off from the exhortations of the elder and the worthy path. Denied his spoil, the great elder retired into his own monastery. Some considerable time later, the elder visited the Hebrew and found him unbelieving and not accepting even a little of the elder’s teaching, but rather bitterly objecting to it, after the manner of his unruly and stiff-necked race. Again the elder withdrew, then a third time he tried again, accomplishing nothing. This elder held to the ancient belief, frequently confirmed by divine revelation: that the good works and deeds of the unbaptized are destructive; that the unbaptized who perform such good works are sent to the fire. It now came about, according to the disposition of God, that the Hebrew died. When the great elder heard of this he wrestled in his spirit with the question of what had become of the Hebrew; to where had he been assigned and what had become of his good works? He prayed to God about this, and the Hebrew was revealed to him, sitting at a richly laid table—but blind. Taking him by the hand [the elder] said to him: “Have you any idea what is before you on the richly laid table lying close to you? I am the monk who used to urge you to be baptized. Even though you resisted me then, now you have the chance to be [baptized,] to see and to delight in these good things. If you are willing, I will call upon God who will restore you to life in the body. I will then baptize you and, with the light [of baptism], you will delight in everything, remaining so forever.” The other replied: “What, and have to die again?” When he had been informed by the elder that he could not inherit immortality without tasting of death he said to him: “Let me be as I am. I cannot taste death again, a second time. The memory [of my death] and the unforgettable bitterness [of it] are with me still.” And that was how the elder’s question was answered.83

The elder’s question is not really answered: the Jew’s undoubtedly virtuous behavior cannot prevail against his refusal to become a Christian. For “works done before the grace of Christ and the Inspiration of his Spirit are not pleasant to God . . . we doubt not that they have the nature of sin,” as certain Anglican divines would state the traditional position in the thirteenth of the (Thirty-nine) Articles of 1562. Rather was the elder’s dilemma resolved by the notion of a third alternative, where righteous Jews and charitable W036, BHG 628c, de Euphrosyno coquo. W006, BHG 1317t, de Hebraeo qui noluit reviviscere et baptizari, ed. P. Canart, Byzantion 36 (1966): 22–23, followed by some very apposite comments and reference to a similar passage in The Life of Saint Basil Junior. 82 83

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sinners could dwell, neither feeling the pains of hell nor enjoying the delights of paradise, a rather gray area not unlike the Hebrew Sheol. What then is to be concluded from all this? First, that the dihgh´ sei" yucwfelei'" do have some things to tell us about the later Romans’ beliefs concerning the last things: the kind of hell they feared, the sort of heaven they hoped for, and a process by which they would attain the one or the other, but these beliefs are to be apprehended by attending to the scenarios of the stories rather than to their direct statements. Most of what the stories have to teach is to be found in the reports of visions which, acutely subjective though they undoubtedly be, insofar as they manifest a degree of consensus, might reasonably be thought to reflect commonly held opinions. Taking the relatively sparse statements about “the last things” in the scriptures (especially in the Gospels) as their starting point, the stories fill in details and supplementary matter of various kinds. If (as we suspect) here is some indication of pre-Christian Egyptian influence in this supplementary matter, this is not to be wondered at since the ancient Egyptians’ religion focused largely on the fate of the dead and possessed a highly developed eschatology. And here there may be a clue to resolving a question that has perplexed the present writer for many years: where do the roots of this eremitic folkore lie? Several other tales-traditions have been investigated, but other than in a very few exceptional cases, little or no connection with the dihgh´ sei" yucwfelei'" has come to light so far. That is until the resemblances with Egyptian religious lore began to appear (compare, e.g., the telw´ nia with the fortytwo “negative questions” of Maat).84 The next stage of inquiry will be diligently to examine that lore to see how many other apparent points of contact with the Christian tales there are. Yet if some influence from the religion of Osiris is to be suspected in the tales, it is neither the only nor perhaps the strongest. This is borne out by the almost complete absence of a supreme, almighty judge in the eschatology of the tales, in spite of the scriptural attestations that Christ will come to judge on the one hand and the predominance of Osiris as judge in the Egyptian tradition. Instead, there is this tussle of angels versus demons which decides the ultimate fate of the soul, these and those being empowered by the extent to which the deceased was sinful or righteous in life. The tales seem to suggest that it is to them that the keys of the kingdom of heaven (and hell) are given, which is scarcely compatible with Christian doctrine. Maybe this too will turn out to be a “peculiar product of the Egyptian Christian imagination” pace Wallis Budge, but maybe not; only time will tell. University of Manitoba 84

E. A. Wallis Budge, The Book of the Dead (repr. New York, 1960), 313–18 et passim.

This is an extract from:

Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No. 55 Editor: Alice-Mary Talbot Published by

Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection Washington, D.C. Issue year 2001 © 2002 Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University Washington, D.C. Printed in the United States of America

www.doaks.org/etexts.html

“At the Hour of our Death”: Mary’s Dormition and Christian Dying in Late Patristic and Early Byzantine Literature BRIAN E. DALEY, S.J.

t the end of a celebrated early article entitled “Eucharist and Christology in the Nestorian Controversy,” Henry Chadwick commented, in his characteristically dense and suggestive fashion, on the “deep religious connexion” that seems to exist between the conception of the person of Christ promoted by Cyril of Alexandria and his later followers, especially those who were to reject the dogmatic formula of the Council of Chalcedon, and the dramatic rise of interest in and devotion to the Virgin Mary in the eastern churches during the fifth and sixth centuries.

A

The whole tendency of Monophysite piety was to minimize the significance of Christ’s soul. As the Antiochenes clearly perceived, the result is that Christ loses solidarity with us. Is there not, then, a consequent need for popular piety to clutch at someone, with a vital part in the drama of redemption, who is beyond doubt oJmoou´ sio" hJmi'n? . . . In such a situation it would be a reassurance if there could be someone in solidarity with the rest of mankind who had risen again in the body. . . . Accordingly, there seems little need for surprise that such a story as the Assumption of the Virgin became current in Monophysite circles during this period.1

At the time Chadwick’s article appeared, in 1951, the scholarly world was preparing to commemorate the fifteen hundredth anniversary of the Council of Chalcedon, and Pope Pius XII had just declared, in the previous year, that the belief that Mary had been assumed bodily into heaven at the end of her life—had been allowed by God to share immediately, along with Jesus her son, in the resurrection of the body—was an integral part of the Christian tradition of faith. Although he offered little further comment, Chadwick’s observation that “for the most part popular piety remains Monophysite to this day” clearly implied a certain disjunction between the faith of Chalcedon and the newly canonized Catholic dogma of Mary’s Assumption. It also suggested that the popular tradition of piety on which the latter rests may well be connected with an exaggerated emphasis on the divine transformation of the human element in the person of the Incarnate Word, more reflective of the christology of the later opponents of Chalcedon than of mainstream dogma. 1

H. Chadwick, “Eucharist and Christology in the Nestorian Controversy,” JTS, n.s., 2 (1951): 163–64.

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Scholarly understanding of the nuances and aims of Cyril’s christology, and of that of his Antiochene opponents, has changed significantly since Chadwick wrote in 1951. Fewer scholars today would assume that a “monophysite” view of the person of Christ necessarily implied that Christ is less in “solidarity with us” than Chalcedon understood him to be, or that the Antiochene theologians were particularly interested in emphasizing such solidarity themselves.2 Even so, the origins and original intent of the story of Mary’s death and entry into glory, which seems to have taken shape in Antioch, Palestine, and Egypt during the century or so after the Council of Chalcedon, undoubtedly remain embedded in the christological debates of the time. The complex mass of narrative sources that present that story to us, extant in varying degrees of completeness in all the ancient languages of the eastern Mediterranean world, has been studied intensely over the past half century, even though critical editions—or accessible noncritical editions— are still lacking for many of these sources. Despite widely varying theories on the chronology and mutual relationships of these texts, it seems probable that the narrative of Mary’s glorious end, her “dormition” or death and her “assumption” into glory or resurrection, was circulated first of all, as Chadwick indicates, within Christian groups that rejected the council’s two-nature, one-hypostasis formulation of the structure of Christ’s person.3 In all the Christian churches, the fifth century was a time of meteoric rise for the figure of Mary in popular devotion, art, and homiletics, as well as in the spotlight of theological controversy between the Antiochene and Alexandrian “schools.” On the political level, the positive support for the cult of Mary by the powerful princess (later empress) Pulcheria should not be underestimated;4 and on the theological and liturgical levels, it seems clear that the growing emphasis on the divinity of Christ, and on the transforming effect of that divinity on his own humanity and that of all who come into contact with him, resulted also in an increasing exaltation of the role of Mary, the human being closest to him, in the story of salvation. And even if this growth in Marian devotion and the multiplication of her privileges in fifth- and sixth-century Greek theology was not the expression of a need for a more accessible human mediator with God, as Chadwick See, for instance, F. Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge, 1997), esp. 161–212; J. O’Keefe, “Impassible Suffering? Divine Passion and Fifth-Century Christology,” TheolSt 58 (1997): 39–60, and bibliography cited there. 3 The standard surveys of the history of the narrative and the theological interpretations of the Dormition story are: M. Jugie, La mort et l’assomption de la Sainte Vierge. Etude historico-doctrinale (Vatican City, 1944); A. Wenger, L’assomption de la T. S. Vierge dans la tradition byzantine du Vie au Xe sie`cle. Etudes et documents (Paris, 1955); E. Cothenet, “Marie dans les apocryphes,” in H. de Jouaye du Manoir, Maria, vol. 6 (Paris, 1961), 71–156; less reliable in detail, but very valuable for its mass of bibliographical information, is S. C. Mimouni, Dormition et assomption de Marie. Histoire des traditions anciennes (Paris, 1995). See also the introduction to my translation of the Greek homiletic material on the Dormition: On the Dormition of Mary. Early Patristic Homilies (Crestwood, N.Y., 1998), 1–45. For a list of all known ancient versions of the Dormition narrative, and an attempt to classify them chronologically by narrative detail, see M. van Esbroeck, “Les textes litte´raires sur l’assomption avant le Xe sie`cle,” in Les Actes apocryphes des Apoˆtres: Christianisme et monde paı¨en (Geneva, 1981), 265–88 (repr. in M. van Esbroeck, Aux origines de la Dormition de la Vierge [London, 1995] I). Van Esbroeck’s classification and proposed dating of these texts, although conjectural in some cases, is the system followed by most scholars today. 4 For a discussion of Pulcheria’s devotion to Mary, and its support by Proklos, patriarch of Constantinople in the 430s and early 440s, see N. P. Constas, “Weaving the Body of God: Proclus of Constantinople, the Theotokos and the Loom of the Flesh,” JEChrSt 3 (1995): 169–94. See also K. Holum, Theodosian Empresses. Women and Imperial Dominion in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, Calif., 1982), esp. 147–74; V. Limberis, Divine Heiress. The Virgin Mary and the Creation of Christian Constantinople (London, 1994), 53–61. 2

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suggested, still it does seem to represent, if one may put it this way, a kind of “spillover” of holy power and transcendent benevolence from the increasingly exalted figure of Christ. By the end of the fifth century, in Greek homiletics Mary had come to be evoked with a kind of ecstatic wonderment as the fulfillment of a whole range of typological figures from the Bible,5 while in sacred iconography and the Hymnos Akathistos she was majestic queen, patron of her people, protector of the city.6 Surely the story of Mary’s remarkable death and her almost immediate entry into the transformed condition of Christ’s risen body, which seems first to have been circulated among anti-Chalcedonian Christians in the late fifth century, must be seen as part of that spillover, that sharing in the role and qualities of the glorified Christ. What I would like to argue here, however, is that another, more strictly eschatological concern was also at work in the development of the Dormition story, as well as in the rapid spread of its liturgical celebration and its theological interpretation by preachers: specifically, the concern to respond to a deep anxiety in the face of death that apparently began to be felt by Christians throughout the Mediterranean world just before 400, by depicting Mary as both the model of serene and holy dying and as the exemplar of the fully achieved salvation promised to all who die in faith. By the eighth century, at any rate, it is clear in the interpretations of Mary’s Dormition by some of the classical homilists of the time that the story and the feast are as much about the general Christian hope for heaven, hope for an eternal happiness that will begin at death and that eventually will include the transfigured body as well as the soul, as they are about the uniquely exalted role of Mary herself. Christian conceptions of death in the first three centuries of the church’s history tended, in general, to mirror those of ancient Israel and popular Hellenistic culture. Most early Christian writers assume that death consists in the separation of the conscious soul from the material body, and that the best hope of the believer is that he or she will rest in a state of comfort among the dead—in “the bosom of Abraham,” perhaps, or in what Tertullian calls the inferiora terrarum7 —until the eschatological transformation of history, the final resurrection of the dead, and the judgment of all who have lived by the triumphant Christ.8 In the most common early western understanding, forcefully expressed by Tertullian, only the martyrs can be expected to join the patriarchs and 5 For references, see my article, “The ‘Closed Garden’ and the ‘Sealed Fountain’: Song of Songs 4:12 in the Late Medieval Iconography of Mary,” in Medieval Gardens (Washington, D.C., 1986), 261 and n. 16; Mimouni, Dormition, 390–413. 6 For the text and an English translation of the Akathistos hymn, see G. G. Meerssemann, The Acathistos Hymn (Fribourg, 1958); for a discussion of its origins, see C. Trypanis, Fourteen Early Byzantine Cantica, WByzSt 5 (Vienna, 1966); J. Grosdidier de Matons, Romanos le Me´lode et les origines de la poe´sie religieuse `a Byzance (Paris, 1977); Limberis, Divine Heiress, 89–92. For the development and importance of Marian iconography in the 5th and 6th centuries, see Averil Cameron, “Images of Authority: Elites and Icons in Late Sixth-Century Byzantium,” in Byzantium and the Classical Tradition, ed. M. Mullett and R. Scott (Birmingham, U.K., 1981), 205–34; J. Pelikan, Imago Dei. The Byzantine Apologia for Icons (Princeton, N.J., 1990), 121–51. 7 De Anima, 55, (CCSL), 2.862.11; cf. Justin, Dialogue with Trypho (ed. M. Marcovich, Patristische Texte und Studien 47 [Berlin, 1997], 80.32–81.36), 5; Irenaeus, Against the Heresies (SC 294), 2.34.1–2, 352–54, and (SC 153), 5.31.1–2, 390–96. 8 For full discussions of the early Christian understanding of death and expectations of salvation, see A. C. Rush, Death and Burial in Christian Antiquity (Washington, D.C., 1941); J. A. Fischer, Studien zum Todesgedanken in der Alten Kirche (Munich, 1954); A. Stuiber, Refrigerium Interim. Die Vorstellungen vom Zwischenzustand ¨hchristliche Grabeskunst (Bonn, 1957); B. E. Daley, The Hope of the Early Church. A Handbook of Patristic und die fru Eschatology (Cambridge, 1991), esp. 5–43.

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prophets of old in Paradise immediately after death. Cyprian of Carthage, it is true, and some later authors insisted that all who live and die in courageous fidelity to their faith will be admitted immediately, as souls, into the Kingdom of God,9 and Clement of Alexandria was convinced that those who have learned impassibility and have become “true Gnostics” during this life will come, at the end of the present life, to the “sacred abode” of the apostles and saints.10 Still, the conception of the place of the dead essentially in terms of a more restful version of Sheol or Hades, rather than as bliss in the presence of God, seems to have persisted among ordinary Christians. The fourth-century Syriac writers Aphrahat and Ephrem, along with Hilary of Poitiers in the West, imagine both the souls and the bodies of the dead as “sleeping” under the earth until the end of history:11 and the commendation of the dead given in the prayerbook of Sarapion of Thmuis—an Alexandrian collection probably put together in the early 350s—asks that the soul of the deceased person be given “rest . . . in green places, in chambers of rest (ejn tamiei´oi" ajnapau´ sew") with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all your saints,” until, in the day of final resurrection, “you may render to [the body] also the heritage of which it is worthy in your holy pastures.” 12 Against the background of such a passive conception of personal existence after death, it is easy to see why classically formed Christians, like Clement of Alexandria or Ambrose of Milan, continued to urge the view on their readers that death, as rest from labor, is a benefit for those who have lived well,13 who have made their lives, in Platonic style, a “preparation for departure.” 14 Gregory of Nazianzus, who frequently stresses the oppressiveness and fragility of the present life, in the style of the book of Ecclesiastes,15 himself cherishes the hope that “every fair and God-beloved soul, when it is freed from the bonds of the body, . . . at once enjoys a sense and perception of the blessings that await it . . . and feels a wondrous pleasure and exultation, and goes rejoicing to meet its Lord,”16 so he, too, speaks of grieving as vain and death as a welcome release. In his To Fortunatus, 12–13, (CSEL 3/1.345–47). Stromateis, 6.13.106–14.109 (GCS 52.485–86); cf. 4.26.163–65 (GCS 52.320–21); 7.12.79 (GCS 17/2.56). 11 See Daley, Hope, 72–75 and 95 for references. 12 Sarapion, Euchologion, 18 (ed. Maxwell E. Johnson; OrChr 249 [Rome, 1995], 68. Similarly, the prayer for the dead given in book 8 of the Apostolic Constitutions (Antioch, late 4th century) asks that God place the departed soul “in the place of the holy ones, in the bosom of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, with all those who have pleased God through the ages and have done his will”; in that peaceful place, the text later says, the just may hope to “see the glory of your Christ” (SC 336.256–58). In this text, it is not clear whether this hoped-for vision of glory is something to be enjoyed immediately after death, or only after the resurrection at the end of history. 13 See, e.g., Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 4.11.80 (GCS 52.283–84) and 7.13.82 (GCS 52.58–59); Ambrose, De bono mortis, 4.14–15 (CSEL 32/1.715–17), 5.16 (CSEL 32/1.717–19), 8.31–33 (CSEL 32/1.730–33), etc.; De excessu fratris, 2.3–7, 20–22. 14 See, e.g., Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 2.20.109.1 (GCS 52.172); Gregory of Nazianzos, Or. 7.18–19 (SC 405.224–28) (life as mele´ th lu´ sew"). 15 See, e.g., Poems, II, 1, 31–32 (PG 37.1299–1305); Or. 7.18–19 (SC 405.224–28) (on the death of his brother Caesarius). 16 Or. 7.21. For a perceptive reading of Gregory’s view of death in its continuity with the spiritualized and intellectualized understanding of the Platonic tradition, see C. Moreschini, “La ‘meditatio mortis’ e la spiritualita` di Gregorio Nazianzeno,” in Morte e immortalita` nella catechesi dei padri del III–IV secolo, ed. S. Felici (Rome, 1985), 151–60. See also J. Mossay, “Perspectives eschatologiques de saint Gre´goire de Nazianze,” Questions liturgiques et paroissales 45 (1964): 320–39; and idem, La mort et l’audela` dans saint Gre´goire de Nazianze (Louvain, 1966). 9

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funeral oration for his father, Gregory sets death in the context of a calm philosophical vision that owes as much to Platonic and Stoic anthropology as it does to the Gospel. Life and death, as they are called—apparently so different—are in a sense mutually dependent, and exist in tension with each other. For the former takes its rise from the corruption that is the mother of all of us, runs its course through the corruption that consists in the constant replacement of the present with something new, and comes to its end in the corruption that destroys this life altogether; while the latter, which is able to release us from the ills of this life, and which often transfers us to the life that is above, is not, in my opinion, properly called death at all, and is more dreadful in name than in reality. . . . There is one life: to look ahead to life. There is one death: sin, for it is the destruction of the soul.17

So in the new hagiographical genre portraying the ascetic life as the Christian “philosophy,” the death of saints like Antony or Macrina was presented as embodying a calm and clear-eyed realization that departure from the body held no dangers for the soul, and was even to be welcomed joyously, as bringing about the union with Christ that one had so long desired.18 In the last decades of the fourth century, however, a new sense of insecurity and dramatic foreboding seems to have entered into the perception of both human history and the individual human life, among many Christians of both Greek East and Latin West. Unsettled, perhaps, by Emperor Julian’s sudden decision in 362 to ban Christians from teaching in publicly supported schools, and by the threat of invasion from a variety of migrating peoples, many Christians in the decades before and after 400 seem to have shared a growing apocalyptic sense that history was nearing a disastrous end.19 At about the same time, a new emphasis on death as a fearful and violent event, in which hostile demons struggle with protecting angels over the fate of each departing soul, begins to show itself more and more widely in Christian literature. For the Latin West, Eric Rebillard has recently argued at some length that the transition from the classic serenity of an Ambrose in the face of death, to the anguish of an Augustine, a Peter Chrysologus, or a Leo, was largely due to Augustine’s theology and was grounded in his growing conviction of the powerlessness and sinfulness of human nature, developed in his controversy with the Pelagians.20 However one judges Rebillard’s thesis—and it seems to me not to explain the more dramatic apocalyptic forebodings of some of Augustine’s own correspondents, let alone the terrors of Sulpicius Severus or Jerome, which antedate the Pelagian controversy—it is at least more likely that the strongly agonistic view of death that begins to appear in Greek and Coptic ascetical and hagiographical literature of the late fourth Or. 18.42 (PG 35.1041AB). See Athanasius, Life of Antony, 92 (SC 400.370–72); Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Macrina, 23–25 (SC 178.216– 28); cf. Gregory of Nazianzos, Or. 8.21–22 (SC 405.290–96), on the serene and prayerful death of his ascetical sister, Gorgonia. For a thoughtful interpretation of the treatment of Antony’s death in Athanasius’s Vita, as a paradigm of a new ascetic ideal of death, see M. Alexandre, “A propos du re´cit de la mort d’Antoine (Athanase, Vie d’Antoine: PG 26.968–974, par. 89–93). L’heure de la mort dans la litte´rature monastique,” in Le temps chre´tien de la fin de l’Antiquite´ au Moyen-Age, IIIe–XIIIe s. (Paris, 1984), 263–82. 19 For the evidence of this change in the perception of contemporary history, see B. E. Daley, “Apocalypticism in Early Christian Theology,” in The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, II: Apocalypticism in Western History and Culture, ed. B. McGinn (New York, 1998), 21–39. 20 E. Rebillard, In Hora Mortis. Evolution de la pastorale chre´tienne de la mort aux IVe et Ve sie`cles (Rome, 1994). 17 18

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century probably has its roots not in learned disputes but in popular Christian piety, and may perhaps reach back to pre-Christian notions common to a number of Near Eastern cultures. Although Athanasius, for instance, presents Antony’s own death as an utterly peaceful event, he describes an earlier vision the saint had of the normal dying person’s struggle with evil spirits, as if it were happening to himself. He saw himself as if he were outside himself, and as if he were being led through the air by certain beings. Next he saw some foul and terrible figures standing in the air, intent on holding him back so he could not pass by. When his guides combatted them, they demanded to know the reason why he was not answerable to them. And when they sought an accounting of his life from the time of his birth, Antony’s guides prevented it, saying to them, “The Lord has wiped clean the items dating from his birth, but from the time he became a monk and devoted himself to God, you can take an account.” 21

This same notion, that repulsive and frightening demons wait to detain the dying soul and to drag it off to hell—that they act as assessors or “tax collectors” (telw'nai) to hold each soul accountable for all its past sins—appears early in the Christian literature of Egypt: in the Gnostic “First Apocalypse of James” and even in a few of Origen’s homilies.22 But it was used with especially powerful effect in the desert monastic literature of the fourth and fifth centuries,23 combined with dire warnings of the severity of God’s coming judgments and depictions of the sufferings of the damned.24 The first letter ascribed to Antony regards the Bible’s descriptions of the punishments of the wicked and the rewards of the just after death as one of the three “gates for souls,” leading to healing repentance in this present life. A homily attributed to Cyril of Alexandria, which almost certainly comes from the monastic world of the fifth-century Egyptian desert, even if it is not by Cyril himself, depicts a separate demonic examination on the use of each of the five senses, and portrays in abundant and harrowing detail the world of torture that awaits convicted sinners after death.25 Athanasius, Life of Antony, 65 (SC 400.304–6), trans. R. C. Gregg (New York, 1980), 79 (alt.). First Apocalypse of James (Nag Hammadi V, 3), 33.2–36.1 (ed. A. Veilleux, Bibliothe`que Copte de Nag Hammadi 17 [Quebec, 1986], 40–46); in its present form, this work shows some signs of Syrian origin, but the idea of demonic tax collectors is clearly Egyptian: see Origen, Homily on Luke, 23.5–6 (GCS 35.154–55; ˆle du de´mon au jugement SC 87 bis. 318–20). On this theme in early Christianity, see J. Rivie`re, “Le ro particulier chez les pe`res,” RSR 4 (1924): 43–64; idem, “Mort et de´mon chez les pe`res,” RSR 10 (1930): 577–621; A. Recheis, Engel, Tod und Seelenreise. Das Wirken der Geister beim Heimgang des Menschen in der Lehre der alexandrinischen und kappadokischen Va¨ter (Rome, 1958). 23 See, e.g., the first Greek Life of Pachomius, 93 (ed. F. Halkin, Sancti Pachomii vitae Graecae; Subsidia Hagiographica 19 [Brussels, 1932] 62–63), and the Bohairic Life, 83 (ed. L.-Th. Lefort, S. Pachomii vita Bohairı´ce scripta, CSCO 89 [Leuven, 1965], 93–94; trans. CSCO 107, 62); or the Coptic fragments of Schenute of Atripe, Op. 42 (CSCO 42.189; trans. 96.111) and 82.1 (CSCO 73.199–202; trans. 108.121 f). 24 See, e.g., Apophthegmata Patrum, Evagrius, 1 (PG 65.173AC); ibid., Macarius, 38 (PG 65.280AB); Macarius of Egypt, Visio (PG 34:386–92). 25 Cyril of Alexandria (?), Homily 14, On the Departure of the Soul, and on the Second Coming (of Christ) (PG 77:1072–90). A small part of this homily also appears in the alphabetical Apophthegmata under the name of Cyril’s uncle and predecessor, Theophilus. Related texts from the Schenute tradition, as well as the style of the homily, suggest that the source is Egyptian and ascetical, although it is unlike the other work of both ¨hchristlichen Literatur, vol. 4 (Freiburg, 1923), 65; Theophilus and Cyril. See O. Bardenhewer, Geschichte der fru M. Richard, “Les ecrits de The´ophile d’Alexandrie,” Le Muse´on 52 (1939): 33–50, esp. 41–42. 21 22

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“What fear and trembling do you think the soul will experience on that day,” the preacher asks, “when it gazes on the dreadful, fierce, cruel, merciless, untamable demons circled around it, as dark as Ethiopians? The very thought of them is more oppressive than any punishment! Just by looking at them, the soul will be cast into turmoil, terrified, racked with pain, and made to shrink with horror and distress, and will flee for refuge to the angels of God. The soul will be protected by the holy angels, as it makes its way forward and upward through the air, but it will discover toll stations (telw´ nia) guarding and controlling the way, blocking the path of the souls that are trying to ascend. And each toll station deals with its own particular sins.” 26

In a more sustained narrative form, the Apocalypse of Paul—probably composed, in its present form, by Greek monks in or near Constantinople during the first two decades of the fifth century—also tells of the role of protective and challenging angels at the death of each individual, and describes at length the divine judgment that follows and the various punishments and rewards meted out to the dead as a result.27 All of these fourthand fifth-century works suggest a new preoccupation, especially in the ascetical milieu, with the uncertainty of human fate after death, an unrelenting emphasis on the need for penance and conversion, and a dread of the severity of the judgment that awaits each departing soul. It is a far cry from both the quiet anonymity of Hades and the peace of Abraham’s bosom. Christian theological literature of the later fifth and sixth centuries, however, shows signs of a decided attempt to correct the imbalance of this anxious picture, by connecting the death of the individual once again with the more hopeful promises of salvation central to Christian tradition. A striking example is the treatment of the church’s funeral liturgy in the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy of Pseudo-Dionysius. In the introductory section to his description and interpretation of these rites, the author remarks that the death of those who have lived holy lives should be as different from the deaths of “profane” people as their whole lives have been: “When those who have led a holy life consider the truthful promises of God, since they have observed the truth of them in some way at the Resurrection [of Christ], they come to the end of death with a divine joy and a firm and sincere hope, as though they were coming to the conclusion of their holy contests. They understand perfectly that through their resurrection to come their rewards will be in a perfect and endless life and salvation.” 28 Rejecting a variety of what he considers erroneous notions of the afterlife—that it will be perpetually disembodied; that souls will receive other bodies and live on earth again; or that the beatitude promised us is simply material, worldly happiness, in some millenarian paradise29 —Dionysius contends that those whose lives are sanctified in faith know instead that “their entire selves will receive the Christlike inheritance.” 30 The baptized who have deviated from the path of faith may see their approaching end as a warning, a questioning of the value of their former behavior; but PG 77:1073C2–D1. Apocalypse of Paul, 8–18, 31–51 (ed. K. von Tischendorf, Apocalypses Apocryphae [Leipzig, 1866; repr. Hildesheim, 1966] 38–48, 56–69). See P. Piovanelli, “Les origines de l’Apocalypse de Paul reconside´re´es,” Apocrypha 4 (1993): 25–64; C. Carozzi, Eschatologie et au-dela`: Recherches sur l’Apocalypse de Paul (Aix-en-Provence, 1994), with introduction, analysis, and corrected Latin text. 28 Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, 7.1.1, ed. G. Heil and A. M. Ritter, Corpus Dionysiacum 2, Patristische Texte und Studien 36 (Berlin, 1991), 120.16–22; trans. T. L. Campbell (Lanham, Md., 1981), 79. 29 Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, 7.1.2, 121.10–12. 30 Ibid. (ed. Heil and Ritter, 121.22–23; trans. Campbell, 80). 26 27

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the holy person is filled “with a sacred joy” as he or she sees death come near, and that joy will communicate itself to the holy person’s friends: “The friends of the one fallen asleep, in accordance with their divine relationship and similarity of life, call him blessed, whoever he is, because he has triumphantly arrived at the goal of his prayers. They offer up songs of thanksgiving to the Author of his victory, and pray that they, too, may come to the same lot.” 31 Dionysius then goes on to describe the funeral rites—allusively, as is his wont, but in considerable detail. The actual liturgy depicted bears enough similarity to the prayer for the dead in the fourth-century Apostolic Constitutions to suggest that Dionysius, too, is presenting us with a recognizable picture of the fifth-century Antiochene liturgy of burial. In his opening prayer for the deceased, the bishop “pronounces a holy prayer praising the august Deity who delivers us from the unjust tyrannical power oppressing us all, and conducts us to his most just judgments” 32 —no demon examiners are thought of here as conducting a summary judgment on a Christian’s life. The texts of the prayers and the contents of the scriptural readings to which Dionysius alludes, as well as the rite of anointing the corpse and what seems to be eucharistic communion for the assembled community,33 are all sacred actions which, in Dionysius’s view, “sanctify the whole person, effect the work of his complete salvation, and announce through all the holy ceremonies that his resurrection will be absolutely perfect.” 34 Although his sermons frequently contain allusions to the prospect of judgment after death, Caesarius of Arles (ca. 470–543), who was presumably a contemporary of the author of the Dionysian corpus, seems to imagine that searching process as involving body and soul at the time of resurrection.35 A brief collection of prayers for the time of death and the service of burial, however, appended to Caesarius’s rule for nuns in a ninthcentury manuscript, which seems either to have been composed by him or to come from the church of his time, presents the death of a Christian, in its ideal form, as the journey of her soul through the underworld directly to a region of light: “Permit her to cross over the gates of hell and the paths of darkness and remain in the mansions of the saints and in the blessed light, as you once promised to Abraham and his descendants.” 36 The language of these prayers is largely reminiscent of the older Latin conception of death as a time of peaceful waiting, but there is at least the hint of special and immediate reward for a person who has consecrated her life to God. The last two decades of the sixth century witness to a continuing concern on the part Ibid., 7.1.3 (ed. Heil and Ritter, 122.15–19; trans. Campbell, 81). Ibid., 7.3.1 (ed. Heil and Ritter, 124.4–7; trans. Campbell, 83). 33 The structure of the ceremony described—opening prayers and psalms; the reading of scripture and a homily by the deacon; the dismissal of catechumens after the homily; the reading out of diptychs; the kiss of peace and concluding intercessions—suggests that the burial service is also a eucharistic liturgy, as does Dionysios’ concluding statement that the anointing of the corpse, which recalls baptism, and “the most sacred symbol of the divine communion,” promise salvation for the body as well as for the soul of the deceased. 34 Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, 7.3.9 (ed. Heil and Ritter, 130.3–5; trans. Campbell, 89). 35 See Daley, Hope, 208–9, for references. 36 Caesarii opera, 2, ed. G. Morin (Maredsous, 1942), 127; trans. F. S. Paxton, Christianizing Death. The Creation of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe (Ithaca, N.Y., 1990), 54. For a detailed study of this and the other prayers of this brief ritual appended to Cesarius’ rule, as well as of their relationship to other Gallican liturgical prayers, see D. Sicard, La liturgie de la mort dans l’e´glise latine de`s origines `a la re´forme carolingienne (Mu ¨ nster, 1978), 260–79. 31 32

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of church leaders in both East and West to affirm that death is not simply a sleep or a period of inert waiting for final transformation, but that the souls of the dead are very much alive, and that both the joy of the blessed and the punishments of the damned begin immediately with death. In a little-known work written shortly after 582 On the State of Souls after Death, Eustratius, a presbyter of Hagia Sophia who is better known as the biographer of Patriarch Eutychius (552–565, 577–582), drew on classical philosophy and the leading voices of the Christian tradition—especially the Cappadocian fathers and John Chrysostom—to argue that the souls of the dead are not inactive in any sense but continue to operate, either in praising God in heaven or in occasionally carrying out missions for God on earth. Citing a passage from Chrysostom that refers to the life after death of the souls of both the damned and the saints, Eustratius asks: “If, then, even before the resurrection, those who have expended their efforts on the virtues enjoy the dignity of the angels when they depart this life, and offer their hymns to God along with the angels as a work of their own, and if those who are weighed down by troubles in this life have them as their advocates and helpers before God, with what right do you say that they can neither appear [on earth], nor be active, nor do anything else at all?” 37 Eustratius’s Roman contemporary, Pope Gregory the Great, is similarly concerned, in the fourth book of his Dialogues, to remind his readers of the prospect of immediate judgment, purification, reward, or damnation after death, and cites the experiences of many in his own day who have had vivid dreams and visions of the souls of the dead, warning of these things. Some of his anecdotes reflect the same sense we have met in fifth-century eastern ascetical literature, that the death of sinners involves a conflict with menacing demons, while “the sound of heavenly singing” accompanies the death of the elect.38 Like Eustratius, Gregory seems to be particularly eager to demolish the notion that the dead are simply quiescent, or that they are incapable of continuing interaction with the living, even as they enjoy or suffer the fruits of the life they have led, in a transcendent state of existence beyond the grave.39 It is in the context of this late antique concern for the fate of the human soul at death and beyond, and of attempts within the Greek church, especially, to offer a more reassuring picture than what was being promoted in the ascetical literature or in works 37 Eustratius Presbyter, De statu animarum post mortem, 17, 18 in J.-P. Migne, Theologiae Cursus Completus (Paris, 1840), 494. This work has not yet been fully published in Greek; a partial edition, along with the Latin translation included by Migne in his collection, first appeared in Leo Allatius, De Utriusque Ecclesiae Occidentalis atque Orientalis Perpetua in Dogmate de Purgatorio Consensu (Rome, 1655), 336–580. In the work, Eustratius refers to his former patriarch, Eutychius, as dead which places its composition after 582. This work is summarized by Photius, Bibliotheca, 171 (ed. R. Henry, 2: Edition Bude´ [Paris, 1960] 165–67). See Daley, Hope, 200. 38 E.g., Dialogues, 4.15 (SC 265.58–62). 39 See, e.g., Gregory’s powerful narrative of the “immense throng” of heavenly men and women who surrounded the holy Roman recluse Romula at her death: Dial. 4.16 (SC 265.66); cf. ibid., 18 (SC 265.70) and 22 (SC 265.78): “God wished to have the voices of these spirits reach human ears, so that human beings might learn in a human way that if they serve God zealously they will live their true lives hereafter.” In his Moralia in Job (14.72–74: CCSL 143A.743–45), Gregory tell us that while he was still papal apocrisiarius in Constantinople (579–586), he publicly challenged the assertion of the reigning patriarch, Eutychius, that the body of the resurrection will not be identical with the present, mortal body—an apparently Origenist position that the patriarch, according to Gregory, publicly recanted on his deathbed. Both Greeks and Latins were clearly preoccupied with the fate of the dead during the last decades of the 6th century.

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like the Acts of Paul, I suggest, that one must place the full development of the story and the liturgical feast of Mary’s Dormition in the sixth century, as well as its subsequent theological interpretation. The origins of the notion that Mary’s death was in some way extraordinary, and that she has already been allowed to share in the full reality of the eschatological resurrection, are obscure.40 Epiphanius of Salamis, writing in Palestine in the late 370s, takes an expressly agnostic position on the question of whether she died and was buried at all, or whether she “remained alive,” presumably in the way that Enoch and Elijah were said to have been taken alive into heaven.41 By the 440s, under the patronage of Bishop Juvenal and the exiled empress Eudokia, a basilica in honor of the Theotokos was built in an ancient Jewish cemetery near Jerusalem, in the heart of the Kedron valley, at the foot of the Mount of Olives and adjacent to the site venerated as the Garden of Gethsemane; by the mid-sixth century, at the latest, pilgrims visited the basilica as the place of Mary’s empty tomb. The first reliably datable narrative sources that testify to some kind of personal apotheosis for the mother of Jesus come from the Syriac churches of the late fifth century. A verse homily by the Syriac poet Jacob of Serug, delivered at a synod of anti-Chalcedonian bishops at Nisibis in 489, celebrates Mary’s holy death and glorious entry into heaven.42 After her body is buried on the Mount of Olives by Jesus and the twelve apostles, her soul is depicted as passing first through Hades to comfort the patriarchs and prophets, then entering with them into the Kingdom of God, where she is crowned queen before “the celestial assemblies.” 43 In Pseudo-Dionysius’s treatise On the Divine Names, probably written around 500 in a west Syrian community, there is an enigmatic passage in which the author, in the persona of a contemporary of the apostles, tells of being gathered with them at what appears to be Mary’s funeral, and of joining with them in an ecstatic outpouring of inspired songs, in praise of the ineffable mysteries that took place then.44 The earliest full narrative of her death and bodily migration from earth to heaven is found in a group of fragmentary Syriac texts in the British Museum, texts representing a source usually dated to the second half of the fifth century.45 In this version, Mary dies 40 For a survey of the highly nuanced terminology developed in late Patristic Greek literature to denote the “mystery” of Mary’s death, see Daley, Dormition, 27–28. 41 Panarion, 78.11, (GCS 37 [Epiphanius 3], 462); ibid., 23 (474). For a discussion of these texts, see Daley, Dormition, 5–7. 42 Although Jacob of Serug (451–519) was not himself a polemical opponent of the Chalcedonian definition, and seems to have retained good relations with some of its supporters, his christology clearly fits the anti-Chalcedonian or “monophysite” pattern of the late 5th and 6th centuries. It seems safe to assume that he was part of the “monophysite” ecclesial communion that had broken contact with the imperial church. See R. C. Chesnut, Three Monophysite Christologies (Oxford, 1976), 6, 119–22. 43 The only available edition of the Syriac text of this memra¯ is that of P. Bedjan, Sancti Martyrii, qui et Sahdona, quae supersunt omnia (Paris-Leipzig, 1902); a partial English translation by T. R. Hurst is available in Marianum 52 (1990): 86–100, and a full translation, by M. Hansbury, in Jacob of Serug on the Mother of God (Crestwood, N.Y., 1998), 89–100. 44 On the Divine Names, 3.2 (ed. Heil and Ritter, 141). This passage is tentatively identified in the early scholia on Dionysios, by John of Skythopolis, as referring to the death of Mary and her entry into glory (PG 4:236C; Eng. tr. P. Rorem and J. C. Lamoreaux, John of Scythopolis and the Dionysian Corpus [Oxford, 1998] 199–200); it is repeatedly quoted by the early homilists on the Dormition, as containing the earliest and most reliable narrative account of the event. 45 These texts, identified as the “obsequies” narrative or S1 by Michel van Esbroeck, are dated to the 5th century by all scholars who have studied them except Mimouni, who prefers to put them in the 6th century on the basis of his own scheme for the development of the Dormition narrative (Dormition, 78–86). For details on their manuscript identity and publication, see Daley, Dormition, 7 and n. 16. A long narrative of Mary’s

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and is buried by the apostles; Jesus receives her soul, and her body is then transferred by angels to Paradise, where it is buried under the Tree of Life to await the resurrection. The two earliest Greek accounts—probably also from the late fifth or early sixth century—tell a much more elaborate story of Mary’s death and burial. One of these narratives (Van Esbroeck’s G1) begins with the announcement by an angel to Mary of her approaching death, in which she is presented with a palm branch from Paradise as a symbol of her coming triumph; they conclude with the discovery by the apostles, three days after Jesus received her soul in death, that her body has also been conveyed by the angels to Paradise, where it is now reunited with her soul.46 In the other (Van Esbroeck’s G2), narrated in the person of John the Evangelist, the apostles are also gathered from the ends of the earth to be with Mary at her death. Many people from Jerusalem, hearing of her approaching end, visit her at Bethlehem and are cured of various illnesses. Finally, Jesus comes to receive her soul, as the apostles sing praise and as Mary blesses the whole assembly. She is buried, despite resistance from Jews; three days later her tomb is discovered to be empty, “and we all perceived,” the narrator concludes, “that her spotless and precious body was translated to Paradise.” 47 It is not until the end of the sixth century that the narrative of Mary’s death and entry into glory seems to have become fixed in its general outline and accepted by all the major churches of the eastern Mediterranean world, whether they subscribed to the imperially sponsored christology of Chalcedon or not. Its origins, however, seem clearly to have been among those who opposed Chalcedon, probably above all monastic communities in Syria and around Jerusalem. Scholars have recently suggested that the final form of the story may represent a compromise between the “aphthartist” party among the non-Chalcedonians—those (eventually even including Emperor Justinian48) who death, burial, and translation to Paradise, which clearly belongs to the same tradition as these Syriac fragments and Jacob of Serug’s homily, is the so-called Liber requiei, now preserved in full only in an Ethiopic translation dating from the 13th century or later. The modern editor of this work, Victor Arras, argues in his introduction to the text (De transitu Mariae apocrypha Aethiopice, I, CSCO 343 [Leuven, 1973], v–viii) that it is the fullest representative of the original source—probably written in Greek—from which not only the Syriac witnesses derive their story, but also the earliest extant Greek accounts (Van Esbroeck’s G1 and G2), the longer Greek narrative of John of Thessalonike (G4: see below), the Latin narrative of Pseudo-Melito (L1), two 8th-century Old Irish narratives (H1), and some Georgian fragments recently discovered and published by Van Esbroeck (I1–3: “Apocryphes ge´orgiens de la dormition,” AB 91 [1973]:55–75, repr. in his Aux origines de la dormition, V). The Ethiopic text, however, contains other known apocryphal stories about Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, which seem more likely to have been added to an older narrative of Mary’s death than to have been omitted by the other early witnesses. As a result, it is difficult to accept Arras’s confident assertion that this Ethiopic text represents the version that is “omnium . . . (fide) dignissimus, quamvis vitiatus” (introduction, viii). 46 This narrative, which clearly shows Gnostic or Hermetic features (see secs. 11, 20), was published by Antoine Wenger from a Vatican manuscript: L’assomption de la T. S. Vierge, 210–40 (in Wenger’s typology, “R”). 47 Pseudo-John the Evangelist, Transitus Mariae, ed. K. von Tischendorf, Apocalypses Apocryphae (Leipzig, 1886), 95–112 (here 112); trans. M. Rhodes James, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford, 1926), 201–9 (here 208). 48 For a discussion of Justinian’s late edict—now lost—supporting the “aphthartist” christology, see F. Loofs, “Die ‘Ketzerei’ Justinians,” in Harnack-Ehrung: Beitra¨ge zur Kirchengeschichte (Leipzig, 1921), 238–48; M. Jugie, “L’empereur Justinien a-t-il e´te´ aphthartodoce`te?” EO 24 (1925): 399–402. Justinian himself always strongly supported the official Chalcedonian formulation of the person of Christ, although he worked for an interpretation of it that would be acceptable to the non-Chalcedonian party. There were “aphthartists,” however, among both Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians: see Leontius of Byzantium, Contra Aphthartodocetas (PG 86:1317A–1320C).

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maintained that the divinizing effect of the hypostatic union upon the human flesh of Christ freed it, and perhaps also the flesh of Mary in which that union was achieved, from the very possibility of corruption from the moment of Incarnation—and the “nonaphthartists,” like Severus of Antioch and Leontius of Byzantium, who held that the flesh of both Mary and Jesus was normal, mortal, and subject to all sinless forms of corruption.49 One early retelling of this unified narrative of Mary’s dormition is contained in a sermon preached by Theodosius, the influential anti-Chalcedonian patriarch of Alexandria from 535, in the year of his death, 566/567. Although the sermon now exists only in Coptic, it was probably delivered in Greek, and the author claims as his source for the dormition story a manuscript from Jerusalem, which he had consulted in the library of St. Mark in Alexandria. After a considerable introduction extolling Mary’s many virtues, Theodosios presents a brief narrative of her life, followed by an extended retelling of the story of her death. Here the emphasis, as he begins, is clearly on Mary’s terror at her approaching end; in a dream, she encounters Jesus, who warns her that her death is near, and she is immediately filled with dread. For the just as well as the sinner, she says, death is a journey across a vast sea of fire; she continues: what shall I say about the separation of soul from body? Oh, that moment is full of fear and terror! We are told that two powers accompany the soul: one light, the other hideous shadow, full of disgusting and fearful shapes. If the soul is just, it is led toward them with compassion and well-meaning encouragement, and one realizes that one is at peace with one’s creator. But if the soul is sinful, those [spirits] who belong to the light withdraw, and those who belong to darkness approach with anger, striking the soul, darting suddenly at it, beating it, grinding their teeth, pouring out flames of fire from their mouths on the face of the soul.50

The portrayal of the anguish of death here is familiar from the Egyptian ascetical tradition. But the point of the narrative is clearly to counteract such terrors. As Mary prays to die peacefully, surrounded by virgins with lamps and censers, and supported by the apostles Peter and John, Jesus appears, telling her that a better life “in the heavenly Jerusalem” awaits her,51 and promising that 206 days after her body is placed in the tomb52 he will come again to reunite her soul and her body and lead both into glory.53 Theodosios proceeds to describe Mary’s peaceful death, her funeral procession and burial—complete with the traditional detail of an attempt by Jews to hinder it by violence—and the joyful reception of her soul in heaven. After 206 days of watching by her tomb, the apostles see Christ appear again; he opens her tomb and summons her body On the possibility of an “aphthartist” influence on the development of the standard dormition narrative, see Mimouni, Dormition, 461–71 and the literature cited there. 50 Vat. Copt. 61, fol. 131v: M. Chaıˆne, “Sermon de The´odose, patriarche d’Alexandrie, sur la dormition et l’assomption de la Vierge,” ROC 29 (1933–34): 305. Chaıˆne offers both a complete Coptic text and a complete translation of this sermon; a text and English translation of its narrative section have been published by F. Robinson, in Coptic Apocryphal Gospels (Cambridge, 1896), 90–127. 51 Chaıˆne, “Sermon de The´odose,” 307. 52 The sermon lays great stress on the date of Mary’s death, which it places on the 20th of Tobi (29– 30 January by our calendar), and that of her bodily assumption, the night of the 15th–16th of Mesori (22 August by our calendar). This seems to represent the Egyptian liturgical practice of celebrating her death, or dormition, separately from her assumption, a practice that may well be reflected in the 18 January date of the assumption festival in the early Gallican missals. 53 Chaıˆne, “Sermon de The´odose,” 309. 49

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forth to be reunited with her soul, saying, “Rise, you who are free! Go, bring to the whole world that liberty by which I have redeemed all of my creation! Rise up, O holy body; be united to this blessed soul, and receive it in resurrection before the eyes of all creation!” 54 Theodosius concludes his sermon by assuring his hearers that Mary has “received glory for all the human race.” 55 Those who practice compassion toward the poor and the weak, and who celebrate the memory of Mary and the saints, will have powerful patrons before Christ, interceding “that the frail little skiffs of our bodies and souls might themselves arrive in safe harbor.” 56 This narrative and its interpretation, by a patriarch who was himself apparently facing death and whose Coptic church had traditionally viewed death in the darkest of colors, conveys a particular poignancy in its studied attempt to replace fear with consolation and hope.57 The Palestinian, Syrian, and Byzantine churches of the sixth century may generally have imagined death in less dramatic terms, yet the same sense of anxiety before demons, the same fear of a pitiless judgment and a journey into dark and unknown regions, seems by then to have percolated into the popular Christian imagination throughout the empire. It seems significant, then, that it was during the last two decades of the sixth century—the decades in which both the presbyter Eustratius and Pope Gregory the Great urged their own, more positive picture of the fate of the dead—that Emperor Maurice (582–602) not only refurbished the basilica at Gethsemane marking the traditional site of Mary’s tomb,58 but established the liturgical celebration of her death and her entry into glory as a feast for the whole empire.59 The Dormition story seems to have been thought to contain a message the world needed to hear. The first extant Greek homily for the feast—as distinguished from the earlier documents I have mentioned, which simply narrated the reported events of Mary’s death and entry into glory—is that of John of Thessalonike, who was bishop of that city for at least some of the time between 610 and 649. John’s homily is largely also a retelling of the Dormition story, as it had now become stabilized throughout the churches of the East, but it includes a brief hortatory introduction. He says that he has composed it in order to put its liturgical celebration, which had been delayed in Thessalonike until then, on the sound footing of reliable tradition; his predecessors had been reluctant to introduce the feast, despite Maurice’s policy, because the accounts circulating of Mary’s death were generally unreliable and occasionally heretical.60 Here John proposes to offer an authenIbid., 312. Ibid., 313. 56 Ibid., 314. 57 The Coptic tradition seems to have continued to find consolation and inspiration for a courageous death in the story of Mary’s end. The present-day liturgy for death and burial of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which is thought to have been derived, through an Arabic translation, from Coptic liturgical books in the 14th century, includes a long prayer to be said over the linen burial cloth before the wrapping of the body, which recounts the story of Mary’s death at length, with some details reminiscent of Theodosius’s homily. ¨ hlein See F. E. Dobberahn in Liturgie im Angesicht des Todes. Judentum und Ostkirchen, ed. H. Becker and H. U (Skt. Ottilien, 1997), 1:657–79 (analysis), 2:882–86 (translation of this prayer). For a description of contemporary practices of mourning among Coptic Christians, which apparently no longer avert to the Dormition ¨rk, ibid., 1:629–55. narrative, see L. Sto 58 This is attested by the Georgian lectionary of Jerusalem: M. Tarchnischvili, ed., Le grand lectionnaire de l’Eglise de Je´rusalem 2: CSCO 204 (Leuven, 1960), 27. 59 So Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos, Church History, 17.28 (PG 147:292). 60 Homily on the Dormition, 1, ed. M. Jugie, PO 19 (Paris, 1925), 376. 54 55

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tic report, based on his culling of material from the best earlier accounts. His purpose, he says, is to glorify the Mother of God in a fitting way,61 but it seems just as clearly to be that of giving his hearers a paradigm for holy dying, a story that models both normal fear and proper ritual practice, and that offers in return a more exalted hope. The details of the Dormition story, as John of Thessalonike tells it, reveal the classical shape of the narrative from now on. After she has been apprised of her coming death by an angel, and given a branch of palm that is to serve—in this, as in many of the Dormition accounts—as a kind of emblem for her funeral procession as well as a traditional symbol of victory,62 Mary prays earnestly to Christ to be saved “from the powers that will confront [her] soul” in the hour of death. She is joined by friends and relatives, and later by the twelve apostles, miraculously gathered on clouds from the ends of the earth; all of them light lamps and join her in her vigil, singing psalms as she prepares the garments for her burial.63 During their watch, Mary remarks to those gathered in her house that death in itself is not terrible, “for it is a universal thing. I am only afraid of the enemy who makes war on everyone. He can do nothing, of course, against the righteous and faithful; but he defeats the unbelieving and sinners, and those who do their own will— he does in them whatever he desires.” 64 Mary’s friends immediately reply, “Sister, you who have become Mother of God and mistress of all the world, even if all of us are afraid, what do you have to fear? . . . You are the hope of us all. We little ones—what shall we do, or where shall we escape?” 65 Mary immediately urges them not to weep, but to rejoice; she herself, however, in the paragraphs that follow, is depicted alternately as calm and full of courage, and as weeping and anxious about the immediate future, especially about the possibility that hostile Jews may try to burn her body before it is buried.66 Mary eventually dies, on the third day after the narrative begins, in a way that determined the later Byzantine iconography of the Dormition: Jesus and the archangel Michael come to her house, and Jesus takes her soul—which John describes as human in form but lacking any features to distinguish it sexually,67 and seven times more brilliant than the sun—wraps it in veils, and gives it to Michael to bear away.68 Mary is buried with Ibid., 2, ed. Jugie, 378 (Daley, Dormition, 49). Michel van Esbroeck uses the palm branch, as well as a number of other details, as the distinguishing ´raires sur l’ Assomption,” mark of one of the two main branches of Dormition apocrypha: “Les textes litte 268–69. In some versions, the angel who gives it to her tells her that he has taken it from the tree of life in Paradise, under which she will later be laid to rest. 63 Homily on the Dormition, 4–6, ed. Jugie, 380–84 (Daley, Dormition, 50–55). 64 Ibid., 5, ed. Jugie, 382 (Daley, Dormition, 52). 65 Ibid., ed. Jugie, 382 (Daley, Dormition, 52). 66 Ibid., 6, ed. Jugie 383–86 (Daley, Dormition, 53–54). 67 The lack of sexual characteristics in this eschatological human form reflects a Greek theological tradition going back to Gregory of Nyssa. In his sermons On the Making of the Human Person (PG 44.177D–196B) 16–18, Gregory argues that the “original” form of the human creature, contained only in the mind of God but most fully reflective of God’s image, lacked the differentiation of the sexes, but that this difference was included in the earthly realization of humanity with the purpose of imposing some limits on sin, since sexual reproduction is closely linked to mortality; in the final perfection of the human person, however, when the “original” form will finally be attained, sexual characteristics will disappear. See also Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection (PG 46.148B–149A); for a 7th-century witness to the same tradition, see Maximus Confessor, Ambigua, 41 (PG 91:1304–16). For a recent reinterpretation of the passage in On the Making of the Human Person, see J. Behr, “The Rational Animal: A Rereading of Gregory of Nyssa’s De hominis opificio,” JEChrSt 7 (1999): 219–47. 68 Homily on the Dormition, 12: Jugie 396 (Daley, Dormition, 62–63). 61 62

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elaborate ceremony (including the prominent use of her palm branch and the singing of Psalm 113 [114–115]—beginning “Israel has come out from Egypt”—during the funeral procession69), and John of Thessalonike tells us that three days later, when the disciples opened her tomb to venerate her body, they found only an empty shroud. The interpretive core of the homily, however, comes not at the end but in a long discourse delivered by the apostle Peter to the assembled mourners just before Mary’s death. Peter praises them for keeping their lamps lit during their vigil, and urges them to do the same with the “immaterial lamp” of the inner person, so that death may be for all of them an entry into “the marriage feast to rest with the bridegroom. For so it is with our mother Mary. For the light of her lamp fills the world, and will not be quenched until the end of the ages, so that all who wish to be saved may take courage from her. Do not think, then, that Mary’s death is death! It is not death, but eternal life, because ‘the death of the just will be proclaimed glorious before the Lord’ (Ps. 115 [116]:15).” 70 John of Thessalonike’s retelling of the fully developed Dormition story, as well as the other extant narrative and homiletic sources, provide details of ritual action surrounding Mary’s death and burial that were clearly considered important by him and later commentators on the Dormition tradition, details that I can only summarize here. Forewarned by God, Mary realizes that death is near; friends and neighbors gather around her bed to console her and pray for her peaceful passing—women from the neighborhood, plus the twelve apostles and St. Paul, gathered from the ends of the earth, and sometimes also other figures associated with the New Testament, like Dionysios the Areopagite. Mary urges them all not to weep or mourn, but simply to carry torches, to burn incense, and to pray the Psalms incessantly in a kind of long vigil service; some of the apostles give elaborate sermons, apostolic exhortations that may be intended as the equivalent of scripture readings. Then Mary dies peacefully, commending her soul into Jesus’ hands; her body is wrapped in the grave clothes she herself has prepared; she is brought to burial in a procession that again includes torches, incense, and the singing of Psalm 113; finally, she is laid in the tomb with solemn prayers, and in some sources the apostles are said to have been inspired by the Holy Spirit to improvise “mystical hymns”: religious poems, presumably, that were not taken from the Psalter. Although the shape and details of the ceremonies of Mary’s death and burial do not directly correspond to what we know of ancient Antiochene or Byzantine rituals surrounding death,71 these narratives are clearly intended to describe an extended solemn liturgy and to hold that liturgy up to their hearers as a central part of how to die well. Ibid., 13, ed. Jugie, 398 (Daley, Dormition, 64). This detail, present in at least two 6th-century narrative sources for the Dormition story (Wenger’s R and A: G1 and L4 in Van Esbroeck’s listing), suggests the use of this psalm in burial rites of the period. We have no other sources to corroborate this for the Byzantine liturgy, although both this psalm and Ps. 114 (116) (“I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice and my supplication”) appear in an early—perhaps even contemporary—Latin Ordo Defunctorum, to be chanted at the moment of death. See Paxton 39; Sicard 2–33. Richard Rutherford has observed that the wording of the first line of Ps. 113 (114) in these Dormition narratives is different from the usual form: not “As Israel came forth from Egypt,” but the declarative “Israel has come forth from Egypt.” As in later Latin liturgical formulations, Mary’s passage through death is conceived as a new typological realization of the Exodus of God’s people. See R. Rutherford, “Psalm 113 (114–115) and Christian Burial,” StP 13 (1975): 391–96. 70 John of Thessalonike, 9, ed. Homily on the Dormition, Jugie, 390 (Daley, Dormition, 58). 71 For full descriptions of the various liturgies surrounding Jewish and eastern Christian death and burial, with the original versions and German translations of the texts currently in use in these communities, see ¨ hlein, Liturgie im Angesicht des Todes (as above, n. 57). Becker and U 69

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In the two centuries that followed John of Thessalonike’s retelling and reinterpretation of the story of Mary’s Dormition, other Greek preachers also attempted to reflect on the wider theological significance of what was now a universally observed liturgical feast: lesser-known preachers like the sixth-century Palestinian bishop Theoteknus of Livias and the unknown author of a late seventh-century homily attributed to Modestus of Jerusalem, as well as major figures of the eighth- and ninth-century church such as Germanus of Constantinople, Andrew of Crete, John of Damascus, and Theodore of Stoudios. Most of them work a modest summary of the now-traditional narrative into their sermons, usually emphasizing that it can claim the authority of no less a figure than Dionysius the Areopagite, but they are clearly hesitant to accept all the details at face value. All of them, more importantly, suggest that what the church celebrated in the story of Mary’s death and resurrection was a great “mystery” that involved not only her but in some way all of humanity, indeed all of creation.72 Perhaps the clearest development of this theological reflection on the meaning of the Dormition festival, and on the narrative it presumes, can be found in Andrew of Crete’s eloquent trilogy of sermons for the all-night vigil of the feast, probably composed during the early decades of the eighth century. The second of these sermons begins with a sustained reflection on the significance for Christian faith of what is being celebrated. Andrew here reminds his hearers that the central Christian Mystery is that of Christ: the Incarnation of the Word, and the redemption worked for all humanity through his presence in the world, his death, and his resurrection. “He accepted even the experience of corruption, he mingled with the dead and entered the cheerless realm of the underworld, so that we might escape the bonds that awaited us there and might pass over to the world of incorruption.” 73 This does not mean, of course, that those who now live by faith in Christ escape the necessity of dying; the point, rather, is that “we shall die, but we shall not remain enslaved by death, as once we did when we were bound by it through the legal bond of sin.” 74 For all Christians, he writes, death truly is a transitory sleep—a “dormition” (koi´mhsi")—“a passage into a second life.” 75 Since even Jesus, in sharing our lot, endured human death and entered into the underworld himself, none of us is dispensed from making that same journey; for Andrew, however, the important message of Christian faith is that “the souls of all who submit to God’s law and show, in the Holy 72 See, for instance, the homily of Ps.-Modestos, 7 (Daley, Dormition, 90–92); see also the Dormition homilies of Andrew of Crete, I, 5 (Daley, 108 ff); John of Damascus, I, 12 (Daley, 196 f). The recognition that the classical Dormition story asserted nothing less than full resurrection of Mary’s body—even though church authors had tended to avoid that term, probably because it is used in the New Testament and the earlier tradition primarily for the resurrection of Christ at Easter and the eschatological resurrection of the saints— is clearly attested by the 12th-century grammarian Michael Glykas, in the twenty-second of his Chapters on difficult passages in scripture: see S. Eustratiades, Micah` l tou' Gluka', Eij" ta` " ajpori´a" th'" qei´a" Grafh'" kefa´ laia, 22 (Athens, 1906), 258–66. 73 Homily II, 1 (Daley, Dormition, 118). 74 Ibid., 2 (Daley, Dormition, 118). 75 Ibid. (Daley, Dormition, 119). The verb koima´ w, sleep, is a fairly common euphemism for dying in classical Greek poetry; its substantival version, koi´mhsi", is not generally used in this sense, but appears in the Septuagint version of the book of Sirach (46:19 [for the “death” or end of the world]; 48.13), in John 11:13, and in Christian literature of the first four centuries. With the general acceptance of the story of Mary’s holy death and entry into heavenly glory, she seems rapidly to have become the figure with whom this term is primarily associated.

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Spirit, a heavenly pattern of life while they are still in the flesh will be taken from [the region of death] to a place of light that more befits the holy state of the saints. . . . As for the beauty and greatness of that place, its infinite blessedness and its loveliness that exceeds even the mind’s power to comprehend, they will doubtless see all these things more clearly and more profoundly who have drawn closer to God than we have.” 76 Against the background of this universal Christian hope, Mary’s Dormition, in Andrew’s view, was simply a direct and immediate realization of the deliverance from death promised to all human beings: an “ecstatic movement toward the things we only hope for during this life, a passage that leads us on toward transformation into a state like that of God.” 77 Like all of us, even Jesus, Mary too had to descend into the underworld of bodily death; but her descent was less slow and laborious than ours will be, her stay in the condition of mortal decay much briefer, in proportion to the degree that her holiness, as Mother of God, is greater than ours. “The period of time for which death and bodily decay held power over her,” he writes, “was only as long as was necessary for her to move, at natural speed, through unknown regions and to come to know them firsthand, regions where she had never set foot before and that she was now crossing as in a journey through foreign, uncharted territory.” 78 The manner of her passing over to heaven, he has Mary herself tell his hearers a few paragraphs further on, “had its own peculiar dignity, above the lot of every other mortal,” but “the change itself will be common to you all.” 79 In fact, Andrew asserts openly at the end of his first homily for the feast, the miracle they are celebrating is something “common to us all, yet proper to her”;80 “this is our frame we celebrate today,” he insists, “our formation, our disintegration!” 81 What the Dormition festival commemorates, in other words, is really nothing else than the universal Christian hope for a life and transformation reaching beyond death, rooted in the life and death of Mary’s son. In 1978 Hans-Georg Beck argued, with typical erudition and flair, that despite the deeply Christian character of Byzantine culture in so many respects, there remained throughout its history, in popular attitudes to death, strong elements of a “mentality”— a de facto way of looking at things—that was more in continuity with antique fatalism than with the Christian hope just described.82 However one may judge his conclusions, the evidence Beck presents certainly illustrates intellectual and emotional conflict and ambivalence, within Byzantine literature, toward death as the ultimate threat to human happiness—a tension, in the terminology Beck borrows from John Henry Newman, between a widespread “notional assent” to the Christian Gospel’s promise of eternal life and an underlying “real assent” to a darker, pre-Christian apprehension of death as simple and inexorable deprivation of all that gives human existence color and joy. Part of the problem, I suspect, is that Greek theology never articulated a clear and unanimous vision of the Christian eschatological hope, at least not in the unambiguous Andrew of Crete, Homily II, 3 (Daley, Dormition, 120). Ibid., 4 (Daley, Dormition, 121). 78 Ibid. (Daley, Dormition, 121 f). 79 Ibid., 7 (Daley, Dormition, 125). 80 Homily I, 8 (Daley, Dormition, 114). 81 Ibid., 9 (Daley, Dormition, 114). 82 H.-G. Beck, Die Byzantiner und ihr Jenseits. Zur Entstehungsgeschichte einer Mentalita¨t, AbhMu ¨ nch, Hist.Kl. (1979, no. 6). 76 77

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terms in which it had come to speak of the trinity of hypostases within the single reality of God, or the two unmingled yet unseparated natures in which the single hypostasis of the Son had his being. There had been no major controversies on eschatology, except for intermittent debates with the Origenist tradition on the corporeal character of the resurrection body and on universal salvation or apokatastasis. Apart from Gregory of Nyssa’s brilliant dialogue On the Soul and the Resurrection or his briefer, more strictly philosophical discourse On the Dead, no Greek theologian had attempted, in the patristic period, to move Christian thought in a systematic and reflective way beyond the vision of immortality sketched out in Plato’s Phaedo, or the Stoic quest for freedom from passion and irrational fear. Ordinary people’s view of death was undoubtedly still overshadowed, through the late patristic period and well into medieval Byzantium, by the dreary prospect of a dank underworld and the dreadful vision of demonic judges harassing the soul at death. In effect, I would argue, the only clear and viable medium in late Christian antiquity for proclaiming the prospect of a gracious transformation of all humanity by God that would reach through and beyond the terrors of death was the story, the feast, and the theological interpretation of Mary’s death: a death witnessed by the apostles and the church, and celebrated with prayer and pious ritual, in which Jesus himself received the departing soul in his arms, and the body, though buried, itself soon came to share in Jesus’ own bliss and glory. The recent date and questionable origins of the story raised some Orthodox eyebrows in the sixth century, but seem not to have mattered in the end. What was important was the news that one of our own kind—the Theotokos, the source of the Savior’s humanity—herself already shared, after death, in the glorious life of the risen Christ, and that Christ had appointed her as our patron to help us navigate the same journey.83 Occasionally, one glimpses a hint of the idea that such a postmortem transformation was indeed still being accomplished in other extraordinarily holy people. In his Life of Symeon the Fool, Leontius of Neapolis, in the mid-seventh century, reports that the end of that saint, too, was what could best be called a koi´mhsi", a falling asleep. Unlike Mary, Symeon was simply buried in a stranger’s tomb by a few friends, without ritual washing, incense, procession, candles, or psalms. But when his faithful follower John the deacon, with other admirers, opened his grave shortly afterwards, to move him to a more honorable resting place, they found that Symeon’s body, too, was gone, “for the Lord had glorified him and translated him.” 84 It seems possible, at least, that the Mystery of Mary’s 83 Significantly, the extant homilies on the Dormition from 7th- and 8th-century authors stress the new role of patron given to Mary after her death and glorification: see esp. John of Thessalonike, 14 (Daley, Dormition, 67); Andrew of Crete, III, 9 (Daley, Dormition, 144); Germanos, I, 8 and II, 2 (Daley, Dormition, 160, 170); John of Damascus, II, 17 (Daley, Dormition, 221 f). It seems to have become commonplace to pray to the Theotokos for help at the hour of death: Theophanes reports this of the dying iconoclast emperor Constantine V Copronymos (Theophanes, Chronographia, ed. Carolus de Boor [Leipzig, 1883] 1.448), and Leo the Deacon (History 10.11 [PG 117.924C]) gives the same picture of John I Tzimiskes. In the 5thcentury Apocalypse of Paul (chap. 46, Tischendorf, 64), Mary is the spokesperson for all the saints who have interceded for Paul and have asked that he be granted his vision of the afterlife. Similarly, in an anonymous 10th-century Byzantine apocalypse, Mary is depicted as interceding with Christ for a respite in the sufferings of the damned—a role that in Apocalypse of Paul (chap. 44, Tischendorf, 62–63) is given to Michael and the other angels. See L. Radermacher, ed., Anonymi Byzantini de caelo et infernis epistula (Leipzig, 1898); Beck, Jenseits, 49 f. 84 Leontios of Neapolis, Life of Symeon the Fool, 168, ed. L. Ryde´n (Uppsala, 1963), trans. D. Krueger, Symeon the Holy Fool Leontius’s Life and the Late Antique City (Berkeley, Calif., 1996), 169 f). A similar disappearance is

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Dormition had already assumed for Leontius the paradigmatic role that Andrew of Crete, some fifty years later, would boldly proclaim it to have for all believers: “this is our Mystery,” our transformation—our pattern and promise of eschatological hope. University of Notre Dame reported of the body of St. Andrew the Fool, in the life of that saint by Nicephorus the Presbyter—a work of disputed date, but probably from the late 10th century and apparently modeled on Leontius’s life of Symeon. Andrew, who has lived on the streets of Constantinople most of his adult life, dies alone; his corpse is found lying on the ground in a subterranean portico, by a poor woman who has been drawn to it by the heavenly fragrance it is emitting. She runs to tell others of this phenomenon, and when they return together, “they saw no one; they were deeply amazed by the fragrance of myrrh and incense, but were unable to find the remains of the saint. For the Lord had transferred him (mete´ qhke—one of the common terms in the Dormition literature for Mary’s transition to glory), by a peculiar judgment which only that person knows, who understands God’s hidden decrees.” (Life of St. Andrew the Fool, ed. L. Ryde´n, 2 vols., Studia Byzantina Upsaliensia 4:2 [Uppsala, 1995], 300; PG 111:888B [translation mine]).

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“To Sleep, Perchance to Dream”: The Middle State of Souls in Patristic and Byzantine Literature NICHOLAS CONSTAS

“Their death is more like dreaming than dying.” (John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith, 4.15)

n the Byzantine world, one’s location in the social order was largely defined by one’s relation to the cosmic order. Coordinating the intimate immensity of the macrocosmic with the microscopic enabled the Byzantines to appropriate and inhabit the cosmos with a culturally sanctioned sense of purpose and direction. Within these orders, living and dying were paradoxically inseparable, and the contemplation of death was recommended as a way of orienting oneself to life, by locating the self, with greater intensity and purpose, within the mystery of existence.1 This study is concerned with patristic and Byzantine beliefs about the immediate postmortem phase of existence, understood as a liminal, intermediate phase between death and resurrection. Never precisely defined, this para-eschatological state appears as an attenuated, semiconscious mode of existence, of indefinite relation to time and space. It is often a phase of self-discovery, or of being self-discovered, in which one’s true character is uncovered and revealed. As a mode of self-confrontation and encounter, it is frequently seen as a form of judgment anticipatory of a future resurrection and a final judgment. Although heavily indebted to the classical tradition, patristic and Byzantine eschatology necessarily broke new ground, inasmuch as the Greeks had rather different notions of survival, if they can be said to have had any at all. Doubts about immortality appear already in Homer,2 as well as in Plato and Aristotle, and, perhaps, Plotinus, who was reluctant to posit a form of the individual, which alone could insure its existence in the

I

1 See, e.g., John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 6 (“On the remembrance of death”), who notes that “even the Greeks have said as much, describing philosophy as a meditation on death,” alluding to Plato, Phaedo (64ab, 67e, 81a) (PG 88:797D); cf. J. A. Fischer, “Mele´ th qana´ touÚ Eine Skizze zur fru ¨ heren griechischen Patristik,” in Wegzeichen, ed. E. C. Suttner and C. Patock (Wu ¨ rzburg, 1971), 43–54. See also M. Fishbane, “The Imagination of Death in Jewish Spirituality,” in Death, Ecstasy, and Other Worldly Journeys, ed. J. J. Collins and M. Fishbane (Albany, N.Y., 1995), 183–208; and P. Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life (Oxford, 1995), 93–101, 138–39. 2 On Homeric psychology, see J. Bremmer, The Early Greek Concept of Soul (Princeton, N.J., 1983). Modern study of the soul began with E. Rohde, Psyche: Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen, 2 vols. (Freiburg-Leipzig-Tu ¨ bingen, 1898). Rohde’s work was closely allied with contemporary studies in anthropol-

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realm of the intelligible.3 Advances in the study of biology and physiology during the Hellenistic period further complexified received opinions about the relation of body and soul,4 leaving the Byzantines with a vast and contradictory collection of texts and traditions from which to draw. In addition to the narrative traditions of ancient myth and the learned discourses of philosophy and medicine, the Byzantines had also to reckon with the popular practices of Greek religion, astrology, and magic, especially after the rise of theurgy in late antiquity.5 Motives from this rather different realm of discourse had a significant impact upon patristic and Byzantine eschatology, notably the so-called Himmelsreise der Seele, the belief in the soul’s ascent through a series of planetary spheres where it is detained and interrogated by hostile cosmic powers. But if Byzantine theorists of the afterlife stood squarely in the tradition of Greek speculative eschatology, they were at the same time intensely critical of that tradition. Above all, it was the biblical doctrine of the resurrection of the body that provoked the greatest disjunction between the respective beliefs of Athens and Jerusalem.6 As Tertullian’s ever quotable aphorism suggests, Christian Hellenism stood in dialectical tension with Christian Hebraism, and the collision of these two cultural and religious languages created an equivocal, hybrid idiom with its own peculiar grammar and syntax. By the end of late antiquity, the classical canon had become deeply inflected by the Semitic imaginary, and Jewish and Christian scriptures provided the Byzantines with auogy and folklore, and focused on the notion of the soul as an active double of the embodied self that could wander away in dreams and visions. Homer provided him with no examples of such, but Rohde found it in Pindar, frag. 131b (which also notes that, in sleep, the soul “reveals in visions the fateful approach of adversities and delights”). Also in accord with 19th-century interests, Rohde’s work was almost exclusively concerned with the immortality and destination of the soul. 3 The most comprehensive study of the soul in Plato remains that of T. M. Robinson, Plato’s Psychology, 2d ed. (Toronto, 1995); for the religious context of Plato’s psychology, see W. K. C. Guthrie, Orpheus and Greek Religion: A Study of the Orphic Movement (Princeton, N.J., 1993); L. R. Farnell, Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality (Oxford, 1921), and D. Lyons, Gender and Immortality: Heroines in Ancient Greek Myth and Cult (Princeton, N.J., 1997). For Aristotle, see M. Nussbaum and A. Rorty, eds., Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima (Oxford, 1992), and R. Sorabji, Aristotle Transformed: Ancient Commentators and Their Influence (Ithaca, N.Y., 1990). Plotinus equivocates at Ennead, 5.7.1: “Is there an idea of each particular thing? Yes, if I and each one of us have a way of ascent and return to the intelligible, the principle of each of us is there. If Socrates, that is, the soul of Socrates, always exists, there will be an absolute Socrates, in the sense that, in so far as they are soul, individuals are also said to exist in this way in the intelligible world” (Loeb, V [Cambridge, Mass., 1984], 223); cf. H. J. Blumenthal, Plotinus’ Psychology (The Hague, 1971), and R. Bolton, Person, Soul, and Identity: A Neoplatonic Account of the Principle of Personality (London, 1995). 4 For a helpful survey, see J. Annas, Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind (Berkeley, Calif., 1992). It was during the Hellenistic period that the blessed dead, who throughout antiquity had been consigned to a subterranean netherworld, were relocated to the sublunar heavens; cf. F. Cumont, Afterlife in Roman Paganism (New York, 1922), 70–90, and A. J. Festugie`re, La re´ve´lation d’Herme`s Trisme´giste, vols. 3–4 (Paris, 1949–54), who studies Hellenistic religious and philosophical traditions that focused on the desire of the human soul to transcend the cosmos in order to make contact with a hypercosmic God. 5 On which see E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, Calif., 1951), 283–311 (⫽ Appendix II: “Theurgy”), and G. Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul. The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus (University Park, Pa., 1995); cf. the 11th-century renaissance of Platonic and hermetic studies fostered by Michael Psellos and John Italos (below). 6 The phrase belongs to Tertullian, De praescriptione haereticorum, 7 (ed. A. Kroymann, CSEL 70 [Vienna, 1942], 10), though it should not be taken as unambiguous enthusiasm for “instruction from the porch of Solomon”; cf. idem, Adversus Judaeos (CSEL 70 [1942], 251–331).

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thoritative texts that permanently colored their views of the afterlife. The parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man (Luke 16:19–31)7 was of particular relevance in this regard, as were passages from the Old Testament and its apocrypha, and it is to a distinctive strand of Jewish apocalyptic piety represented in such texts as 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra that the Byzantine middle state of the soul owes many of its basic features.8 If the use of classical myth and philosophy was largely determined by scripture, then scripture itself was but a rough sketch fulfilled in the person of Christ, whose own soul had sojourned famously in Hades. As a result, disparate and unwieldy traditions regarding the fate of the soul after death could be organized by being ordered to the death of Christ as to a universal prototype (cf. Col. 1:18). The exemplary death of Christ was memorialized in liturgy, monumentalized in art, and mimetically reenacted in the passions of the martyrs and in the death-by-asceticism of the saints. Indeed, before the Byzantines developed a coherent theological position on the fate of the soul after death (and it is by no means clear that they did), they had long worshiped one who rose from the dead, and had constructed an elaborate system of devotion to the saints—the living dead—forming a deeply embedded and heavily sedimented repertoire of liturgical traditions that variously shaped eschatological discourse. Theory, in other words, followed upon practice, and it was gradually acknowledged that the doctrine of the resurrection and the cult of the saints presupposed a rather particular theological anthropology, and (given the macrocosmic character of the human being), a corresponding cosmology and eschatology.9 After centuries of reflection and debate, the implications of these devotional and cultic first principles assumed the status of deeply held theological convictions. Not least among them was the belief in the active In addition to the theme of poverty and riches, patristic and Byzantine exegesis of the Lucan parable was concerned with the memory of sins committed in the body, and with the ability of saintly and sinful souls to recognize each other in the afterlife. See, for example, Justinian’s condemnation of Origenism: “If it is true that souls preexist their bodies, they would be conscious of and remember the deeds they wrought before they entered the body, just as they are conscious of and remember them after death, as we shall demonstrate from the words of the Lord in the Gospel of Luke [followed by a verbatim citation of Luke 16:19–28]” (Ad Menam liber adversus Origenem, ACO, 3:196, lines 11–17); cf. J. F. Dechow, “The Heresy Charges against Origen,” in Origeniana Quarta (Innsbruck, 1987), 112–22; M. Alexandre, “L’interpre´tation de Luc 16.19–31, chez Gre´goire de Nysse,” in Epektasis, ed. J. Fontaine and C. Kannengiesser (Paris, 1972), 425–41. 8 Both 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra are concerned with situating the souls of the righteous dead in view of an impending, earthly reign of the Messiah. In 2 Baruch, the souls of the dead are kept in the “treasuries of Sheol” (21:23, 24:1), while 4 Ezra speaks of seven chambers in Hades guarded by angels (7:78–101). 1 Enoch 1–36 (“The Book of the Watchers”) consigns dead souls to one of three corners in a hollow mountain in the west (22:5). The Wisdom of Solomon encloses the “souls of the righteous in the hand of God” (3:1–2), while 4 Maccabees places them alongside the throne of God (17:18). Wisdom 3:1–9 was read at Byzantine memorials of the martyrs, and illustrated in monumental painting, on which see S. Der Nersessian, “Program and Iconography of the Frescoes of the Parreclesion,” in The Kariye Djami, ed. P. A. Underwood, vol. 4 (Princeton, N.J., 1975), 305–49, esp. 331–32 (“The Souls of the Righteous in the Hand of God”). Related texts include: 1 Sam. 28:3–25 (the spirit of Samuel and the “witch” of Endor); Job 19:25–26 (immortality and resurrection); Ezech. 37:5–13 (vision of the dry bones); Isa. 26:7–19 (resurrection as national revival); Dan. 12:1–10 (universal resurrection of the dead). 9 For an early, and formative, example of this connection, see Basil of Caesarea, Hexaemeron, 1.4: “It is absolutely necessary that the cosmos should be transformed if our souls are due to be transformed in a different kind of life. Just as the present life has affinities (suggenh') with the nature of this world, so the kind of existence which will apply to our souls tomorrow will have an environment appropriate to their condition” (ed. S. Giet, SC 26 [Paris, 1968], 102). 7

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survival of the saintly soul and the abiding connection of such souls to the scattered fragments of their bodies. The continuity of the earthly and eschatological body was matched by the continuity of memory and consciousness, producing a powerful, living presence that was made available to the Byzantine faithful from within the transcendent time and sacred space of liturgy. However, despite the inherited apparatus of cult, alternative schools of thought reached rather different conclusions on these matters and contested those of the official church. In virtually every period of Byzantine history, critical voices denied that the souls of the dead could involve themselves in the affairs of the living or intercede on their behalf in heaven. Based on a more unitive, materialist notion of the self as irreducibly embodied, some thinkers argued that the souls of the dead (sainted or otherwise) were largely inert, having lapsed into a state of cognitive oblivion and psychomotor lethargy, a condition sometimes described as a state of “sleep” in which the soul could only “dream” of its future punishment or heavenly reward. Still others argued for the outright death of the soul, which, they claimed, was mortal and perished with the body, and which would be recreated together with the body only on the day of resurrection. Obviously, such views nullified the need for liturgies and memorial offerings for the dead. They also undercut the religious efficacy, social fetishization, and cultural commodification of relics and icons. Needless to say, these rival eschatologies provoked shrill arguments to the contrary from church officials who, among other things, were deeply invested in the lucrative traffic of the sacred. We may be tempted, therefore, to conclude that the middle state of souls between death and resurrection was more muddle than mystery, and yet the Byzantines were in no great hurry to impose on it anything like systematic definition or closure. To the extent that Byzantine eschatology was rooted in the symbolic representations of liturgy, burial practices, and the mystery of Christ and his saints, any attempt at systematic definition was not only elusive but perhaps undesirable. Nevertheless, Byzantine ambiguity was to have its limits. When the Byzantines encountered the Latin doctrine of purgatory, in cursory fashion at the Council of Lyons (1274), and again more fully at the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438–39), they were forced to articulate their beliefs on the subject (and thus construct their own doctrinal identity), if only in dialectical contrast to the Latins.10 It is ironic, then, that the Byzantine theology of death and the afterlife attained its consummate expression as a eulogy pronounced over the dying body of Constantine’s ill-fated empire. EARLY FORMULATIONS One of the earliest attempts to produce an eschatology with specific attention to the middle state of souls belongs to Irenaeus of Lyons (ca. 130–202), who did so in polemical counterpoint to early Christian chiliasm and Valentinian gnosticism.11 For the Chiliasts, the existence of an intermediate state between death and resurrection was necessary to “They were, those people, a kind of solution,” to quote from Cavafy, Waiting for the Barbarians, trans. E. Keeley and P. Sherrard, C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems (Princeton, N.J., 1992), 19. 11 The central passage is Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 5.31–32 (ed. A. Rousseau, SC 153 [Paris, 1969], 389– 404). Here I am helped by the work of C. Hill, Regnum Caelorum. Patterns of Hope in Early Christianity (Oxford, 1992), 9–18; see also C. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York, 1995), 21–58. 10

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accommodate the souls of the righteous as they awaited the establishment on earth of a messianic kingdom lasting a thousand years (cf. Rev. 20:3–7). Their Gnostic opponents, on the other hand, denied the resurrection of the body, along with the need for a temporary place of rest for the soul, which, they believed, proceeded directly to heaven.12 Irenaeus, while rejecting both the Gnostic denigration of the flesh as well as the chiliastic belief in a resuscitated corpse, nevertheless agreed with the Chiliasts that personhood was inclusive of the body,13 and he likewise affirmed the existence of a penultimate state prior to the resurrection. Until then, the souls of the dead reside in an “invisible place allotted to them by God” (Adv. Haer. 5.31.2), where they retain the “form” of their physical bodies along with their memories of life on earth (Adv. Haer. 2.34.1–2, citing Luke 16.19– 31). It is worth noting that, for Irenaeus, the interim state of the soul (as well as the millennium) is a period of training in a larger process of growth in which the righteous gradually become accustomed to life in God. Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–215), who wrote a book on Christ the Pedagogue, also viewed salvation as a process of growth, understood largely as a system of education. For Clement, the death of the body is a change for the better and marks an advance in the gnostic science of God. After death, souls will be educated by angels in a seminar scheduled to last for a thousand years. Upon completion of their studies, graduating souls are transformed into angels and given teaching responsibilities over incoming freshmen, while their former teachers receive promotion to the rank of archangel.14 The martyrs, having already taken their advanced degrees through earthly correspondence courses, constitute a class of eschatological ´elites and are conducted immediately with full tenure into the presence of God. In an opinion that was to gain wide currency, Clement notes that Hades, which was once a receptacle for all the dead, has been emptied by Christ and now receives only the souls of sinners.15 Clement states that these souls also undergo a process of education, although in their case it takes the form of painful purification Invoking the exemplum Christi, Irenaeus notes that, “If these things are as they say, then the Lord himself would have departed on high immediately after his death on the cross.” Adv. Haer. 5.31.1 (SC 153 [Paris, 1969], 391); see below, note 40. 13 The paradigmatic body envisioned by Irenaeus is primarily that of the martyr, whose vindication demands the compensatory glorification of the flesh: “It is only just that in the same creation in which the saints toiled and were afflicted, being tested in every way by suffering, that they should receive the reward of their suffering, and that in the same creation in which they were slain because of their love for God, in that they should be revived again, and that in the creation in which they endured servitude, in that same creation they should reign.” Adv. Haer. 5.32.1 (SC 153 [Paris, 1969], 397–99). Cf. Andrew of Caesarea (d. 614): “It is foolish to think that the body will be resurrected divorced from its own members, through which it worked either good or evil, for it is necessary that the members that glorified God should themselves be glorified (cf. 1 Kings 2:30)” (ed. F. Diekamp, Analecta Patristica [Rome, 1938], 166). 14 Eklogai Prophetikai, 57.1–4; cf. The Shepherd of Hermas, Visions, 2.2.6, where the righteous are promised “passage with the angels,” and H. Bietenhard, Die himmlische Welt im Urchristentum und Spa¨tjudentum (Tu ¨ bingen, 1951), 186–88 (“Die himmlische Akademie”). Clement can also speak of such education in terms of “painful purification” and “cultic initiation” (Strom. 6.14.109.5; Prot. 12.118.4). See also Plato (Phaedrus, 248–49; Republic, 10.615), who posited a period of 1,000 years between the soul’s various incarnations during which it resides on a star. That the righteous will become angels is denied by the anti-Origenist writer Methodios of Olympos, De Resurrectione, 1.51.2; cf. L. G. Patterson, Methodius of Olympus (Washington, D.C., 1997), 170–74. 15 Strom. 6.6.44.5–47. Marcion had earlier noted that Christ removed from Hades only those who were the enemies of the unjust god of the Old Testament, cited by Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 1.27.3 (SC 264 [Paris, 1979], 350–52). On Clement’s use of Irenaeus, see, L. G. Patterson, “The Divine Became Human: Irenaean Themes in Clement of Alexandria,” StP 31 (1997): 497–516; on the links between martyrdom and gnosticism, see A. van den Hoek, “Clement of Alexandria on Martyrdom,” StP 26 (1993): 324–41. 12

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in the flames of a “prudent, discerning (fro´ nhmn) fire, which penetrates the soul that passes through it.” 16 Much of Clement’s work was developed by his successor Origen (ca. 185–253/54), who was, according to Brian Daley, “the most controversial figure in the development of early Christian eschatology.” 17 Origen was also the most voluminous author of antiquity, allegedly producing some two thousand works, although according to his disciple Pamphilius, even Origen himself never dared to write a treatise on the soul (Apol. 8; PG 17:604). The collusion of controversy and prolixity adversely affected Origen’s literary corpus, and his eschatology must be pieced together from the wreckage of fragments, paraphrases, and tendentious translations. At times, Origen suggests that all souls reside in Hades, which contains places of rest (the “bosom of Abraham”) and places anticipatory of future punishment (De princ. 4.3.10). Elsewhere, however, he states that after the death of Christ, the souls of the saints go immediately to paradise (Hom. in Lk., frg. 253; Dial. Her. 23). Origen also believes that saintly souls subsist in “luminous bodies” made of “subtle matter” as a kind of vehicle enabling their continued activity and appearances on earth.18 These souls take an active interest in the affairs of the living (Comm. in Mt. 15.35; Jn. 13.58 [57] 403), interceding on their behalf at the divine altar and assisting them as they grow in knowledge and wisdom (cf. Ex. Mart. 30.38; Hom. in Num. 24.1; Hom. in Cant. 3; Hom. in Jos. 16.5). Origen also teaches that the souls of the wicked will be punished in the “invisible fires of Gehenna,” although like Clement, he too sees these as having an ultimately corrective and therapeutic function. In fact, Origen believes that, in order to enter paradise, all souls must pass through the flaming sword of the cherub that stands guard outside the gates of Eden (cf. Gen. 3:24; 1 Cor. 3:11–15).19 If the soul has preserved the grace of 16 Strom. 7.6.34.4; cf. W. C. van Unnik, “The ‘Wise Fire’ in a Gnostic Eschatological Vision,” in Kyriakon, ed. P. Granfield and J. A. Jungmann (Mu ¨ nster, 1970), 277–88. The older study by G. Anrich, “Clemens ¨r H. J. Holtzmann und Origenes als Begru ¨ nder der Lehre vom Fegfeuer,” Theologische Abhandlungen, Festgabe fu (Tu ¨ bingen-Leipzig, 1902), 95–120, is still useful; cf. T. Spacil, “La dottrina del purgatorio in Clemente Alessandrino ed Origene,” Bessarion 23 (1919): 131–45. See also Plato, Gorgias, 34.478, 81.525; Phaedo, 62.113d; Protagoras, 13.324b; Laws, 5.728c; and Vergil, Aeneid, 741–42, 745–47. 17 B. Daley, The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology (Cambridge, 1991), 47. 18 Contra Celsum, 2.60, alluding to the “shadowy apparitions” of the Phaedo, 81d (trans. H. Chadwick, Origen, Contra Celsum [Cambridge, 1986], 112–60). It is significant that these remarks occur in a discussion about the resurrected body of Christ, although that the soul necessarily has a bodily form is also a corollary of Origen’s belief that God alone is incorporeal; cf. M. Simonetti, “Alcune osservazioni sull’interpretazione origeniana di Genesi 2,7 e 3,21,” Aevum 36 (1962): 370–81; H. Crouzel, “Le the`me platonicien de ‘ve´hicule de l’aˆme’ chez Orige`ne,” Didaskalia 7 (1977): 225–38; repr. in idem, Les fins dernie`res selon Orige`ne (Hampshire, U.K., 1990), III; E. R. Dodds, Proclus: The Elements of Theology (Oxford, 1963), 313–21 (“The Astral Body in Neoplatonism”), and J. J. Finamore, Iamblichus and the Theory of the Vehicle of the Soul (Chico, Calif., 1985). 19 L. R. Hennessey, “The Place of Saints and Sinners after Death,” in Origen of Alexandria. His World and Legacy, ed. C. Kannengiesser and W. L. Peterson (Notre Dame, Ind., 1988), 295–312. See also H.-J. Horn, “Ignis Aeternis: Une interpre´tation morale du feu ´eternel chez Orige`ne,” REG 82 (1969), who argues that Origen is dependent on the Stoics, for whom the pathe were like a “burning fever” that decomposed the harmony of the soul. See also H. Crouzel, “L’exe´ge`se orige´nienne de 1 Cor 3.11–15 et la purification eschatologique,” in Epektasis, ed. J. Fontaine and C. Kannengiesser (Paris, 1972) 273–83; repr. in idem, Les fins dernie`res, II. Origen’s belief that the fires of Hell would come to an end (i.e., his doctrine of a universal apokatastasis) is partly a response to Gnostic charges of a cruel and vindictive God, cf. Hom. in Lev. 11.2 (ed. W. A. Baehrens, GCS 29 [Leipzig, 1920], 6, p. 450, line 26).

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baptism, its passage through these gates is relatively painless. If not, it undergoes a purgatorial “baptism of fire.” 20 In an allegorical interpretation of the Exodus narrative, Origen states that when the soul “sets out from the Egypt of this life” and begins its long journey toward heaven, it will gradually come to understand the “pilgrimage of life, which we understand only dully and darkly so long as the pilgrimage lasts. But when the soul has returned to rest, that is, to the fatherland in paradise, it will be taught more truly and will understand more truly what the meaning of its pilgrimage was” (Hom. in Num. 27). After its exodus from the body, the soul will continue to be “educated and molded” by “princes and rulers who govern those of lower rank, and instruct them, and teach them, and train them to divine things.” Having discovered the meaning of life in the body, the soul will in turn learn the various secrets of scripture, the differences among the heavenly powers, the reason for the diversity of creation, the nature of providence, and, “after no small interval of time,” the righteous will ascend from the earthly paradise and embark upon planetary travel, passing through the heavenly spheres, and learn the nature of the stars (De prin. 2.11.5–7). The eschatology of Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 335–394)21 marks an important shift away from the highly intellectualist reading of the soul in Clement and Origen toward greater interest in the unity and interdependence of soul and body. In his De hominis opificio (written in 379), Gregory stages a confrontation between Plato and Moses, in which he weighs the doctrine of reincarnation against the creation of man described in the book of Genesis. “I cannot,” Gregory says, “be both posterior and anterior to myself ” (§29), and he rejects the notion of the soul’s preexistence and transmigration in a succession of different bodies (§28; cf. De anima §8). Gregory asserts that the human person is a union of mind and body and, in rather Aristotelian terms, argues that it is only in and through the body that the mind can realize itself in its natural finality. Body and soul conspire Origen calls baptism the “first resurrection,” while the postmortem passage through the flaming sword he calls a “second resurrection,” or a “baptism by fire,” on which see H. Crouzel., “La ‘premie`re’ et la ‘seconde’ re´surrection des hommes d’apre`s Orige`ne,” Didaskalia 3 (1973): 3–19; cf. Gregory of Nazianzos, Oration 43.70: “Basil escaped the flaming sword, and, as I am well assured, has attained paradise” (PG 36:592A). 21 On Gregory’s psychology and eschatology, see, G. B. Ladner, “The Philosophical Anthropology of St. Gregory of Nyssa,” DOP 12 (1958): 59–94; L. F. Mateo-Seco, “La teologia de la muerte en la ‘Oratio Catechetica Magna’ de San Gregorio de Nisa,” Scripta Theologica 1.2 (1969): 453–73; idem, “La muerte y su mas alla en el ‘Dialogo sobre el Alma y la Resurreccion’ de Gregorio de Nisa,” ibid., 3.1 (1971): 75–107; M. Alexandre, “Le ‘De Mortuis’ de Gre´goire de Nysse,” StP 10 (1970): 35–43; J. Cavarnos, “The Relation of Body and Soul ¨rrie et al. (Leiden, in the Thought of Gregory of Nyssa,” in Gregor von Nyssa und die Philosophie, ed. H. Do 1976), 61–78; C. Kannengiesser, “Logique et ide´es mortices dans le recours biblique selon Gre´goire de Nysse,” in ibid., 85–103; M. Harl, “La croissance de l’aˆme selon le de infantibus de Gre´goire de Nysse,” VChr 34 (1980): 237–59; H. Meissner, Rhetorik und Theologie: Der Dialog Gregors von Nyssa de Anima et Resurrectione (New York, 1991); C. Roth, “Platonic and Pauline Elements in the Ascent of the Soul in Gregory of Nyssa’s Dialogue on the Soul and the Resurrection,” VChr 46 (1992): 20–30; R. Williams, “Macrina’s Deathbed Revisited: Gregory of Nyssa on Mind and Passion,” in Christian Faith and Greek Philosophy in Late Antiquity, ed. L. Wickham et al. (Leiden, 1993), 227–46; E. Peroli, “Gregory of Nyssa and the Neoplatonic Doctrine of the Soul,” VChr 51 (1997): 117–39; J. Zachhuber, Human Nature in Gregory of Nyssa (Leiden, 2000). For Gregory of Nazianzos, see J.-M. Szymusiak, Ele´ments de the´ologie de l’homme selon saint Gre´goire de Nazianze (Rome, 1963); J. Mossay, La mort et l’au-dela` dans saint Gre´goire de Nazianze (Louvain, 1966); J. M. Mathieu, “Remarques sur l’anthropologie de Gre´goire de Nazianze et Porphyre,” StP 17.3 (1982): 1115–19. For Basil, see M. Girandi, Basilio di Cesarea e il culto dei martiri nel IV secolo. Scrittura e tradizione (Bari, 1990), 165–77 (“Il culto per le reliquie”), and A. d’Ale`s, “Le Prince du sie`cle” (below, note 58). 20

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together in the animation of the human, and the soul grows with the body in such a way that the two together recapitulate the evolutionary history of the intelligible and material creations. In a remarkable passage, Gregory suggests that the imago dei resides, not within the mind as such, but within the conjunction and interdependence of mind and body. Just as the mind is manifested through a plurality of sensory operations and activities, so too is the divine Trinity itself a single nature that is revealed through a plurality of operations and attributes (§6; cf. De anima §2). In advocating a more unitive anthropology, Gregory argues for the profound dependence of the mind on the body. In order both to express itself and to receive impressions from without, the mind must come to its senses (§10), and there can be, he says, no intellectual perception without a material substrate (§14); he dismisses as so much Platonism the idea that the soul can operate independently of a body (§13).22 Consistent with this view, Gregory compares the souls of the dead to the minds of those who are asleep: “In a certain sense, sleep and waking are nothing more than the intertwining of death with life: our senses are dulled in sleep and our awakening brings about the resurrection we long for” (De mort., PG 46.521C). In his Dialogue on the Soul and the Resurrection (written in 380), Gregory stages yet another confrontation between Athens and Jerusalem, casting his dying sister Macrina in the role of biblical exegete, while he himself raises stereotypically Greek objections to the doctrines of immortality and resurrection (§1). After discoursing on the necessity of eternal life for the proper fulfillment of human virtue, Macrina gathers up some of the anthropological threads from the De hominis opificio, and argues that the relationship between mind and body is so intimate that, even after death, the soul remains sympathetically linked to the physical remains of its former partner, down to the tiniest atoms and particles (§2). Though tragically severed from the body, the soul continues to exist in a dimension without spatial extension, and can thus abide even with the most widely dispersed of its bodily fragments and somehow remain whole (§2; cf. §6). Based on an etymological derivation of Hades (a” dh") from the word ajeide´ ", Macrina insists that Hades is not a physical place, but rather a state or condition of the soul (§3).23 She consequently rejects what she considers to be an outdated cosmology in which Hades 22 Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Discourse on the Holy Pascha: “What is it we call man? Is it both [i.e., body and soul] together, or one of them? Surely it is clear that the conjunction of the two is what gives the living thing its character. . . . There is no division of the soul from the body when it practices theft or commits burglary, nor again does it by itself give bread to the hungry or drink to the thirsty or hasten unhesitatingly to the prison to care for the one afflicted by imprisonment, but for every action the two assist each other and cooperate in the things that are done” (ed. E. Gebhardt, Gregorii Nysseni Opera [Leiden, 1967], 9.1, 266–67; trans. S. Hall, in The Easter Sermons of Gregory of Nyssa, ed. A. Spira and C. Klock [Cambridge, Mass., 1981], 21). Gregory’s ethical understanding of the relationship between body and soul parallels the virtually universal parable of the “Blind and the Lame,” on which cf. L. Wallach, “The Parable of the Blind and the Lame: A Study in Comparative Literature,” JBL 62 (1943): 333–39, and M. Bergman, “The Parable of the Lame and the Blind: Epiphanius’ Quotation from an Apocryphon of Ezekiel,” JTS 42 (1991): 125–38. 23 Cf. Methodios, De resurrectione, 2.28: a” dh" . . . para` to` ajeide´ ", dia` to` mh` oJra'sqai, kaqa´ per ejle´ cqh kai` jWrige´ nei (ed. G. N. Bonwetsch, GCS 27 [Leipzig, 1917], 385, line 21; PG 18:316B); cf. H. Crouzel, “L’Hade`s et la Ge´henne selon Orige`ne,” Gregorianum 59 (1958): 291–331; repr. in idem, Les fins dernie`res, X. See also, G. L. Prestige, “Hades in the Greek Fathers,” JTS 24 (1923): 476–85, a study based on material compiled for G. W. H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford, 1961), p. iii, n. 1; and J. Jeremias, “a” dh",” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. G. Kittel, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1964), 146–49.

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provides the subterranean foundation upon which earth and heaven are respectively stacked.24 Macrina also has much to say about purification after death, which, she says, will be proportionate to one’s attachment to the flesh. The “purifying fire” with which all flesh will be salted (cf. Mark 9:49) will be relative to the combustible material—the moral “fuel”—supplied by each soul (cf. 1 Cor. 3:13) (§6–7). To prove her point, she has recourse to the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man (Luke 16:19–31), as well as to various analogies, including that of a dead body pinned under a house that has collapsed in an earthquake: “Not only are such bodies weighed down by fallen debris, but they are also pierced by spits and stakes which are found in the pile. Whatever these bodies are likely to endure when they are dragged out by their relatives (they will be mangled and torn, lacerated by the debris and the nails, and by the force of those who pull them out)— some such experience I think will happen to the soul, when the power of divine love for mankind draws its own out from the irrational and immaterial debris” (§7).25 In sum, the general direction of Gregory’s thought is a movement away from the Platonic dualism of mind and body (evident in his early works) in the direction of a more Christian understanding of the human person as a unitive conjunction of the two. The Greek preference for the intelligible over the sensible is brought into balance by the New Testament belief in the resurrection of the body. The recapitulation of the intelligible and the sensible in the human person—body and soul—constitutes a harmony of opposites, a unification of creation within the human microcosm, in order for the cosmos as a whole to be united to God. The body is no longer that into which the soul is exiled. Instead, exile means being away from the body. THE MIDDLE STATE OF SOULS: MEMORY AND MIMESIS The intimate juxtaposition of body and soul and the nature of their relationship after death continued to exercise the imaginations of theologians as well as the patrons of sacred shrines. For all parties, the body was increasingly seen as foundational to the nature of human identity, and corporeal relics and personal objects were granted a critical role in epitomizing the material continuity of the self as it passed from life into death. Fragments of bone and bits of clothing helped to keep alive the memories of the lives that preceded them, although they were more than just medieval artes moriendi. In venerating relics, the Byzantines embraced living saints, as well as their own death; each informed the other. The relic of the body was thus deeply marked by the presence of 24 Other late antique Greek theologians who deal with the subject of Hades and the afterlife include John Chrysostom (ca. 340–407), In Lazarum hom. 1–7 (PG 48:963–1054); Eustratios, Refutation (after 582) (ed. L. Allatius [cited below, note 66]); Andrew of Caesarea (563–614), Curatio, frag. 1 (ed. F. Diekamp, AnalPat, 165–66); Andrew of Crete (ca. 660–740), In vitam humanam et in defunctos (PG 97:1284D–1292A); Ps.-Athanasios, Quaestiones ad Antiochum 16–35, 133–35 (PG 28:607D–617C, 681AD): cf. G. Bardy, “La litte´rature patristique des ‘Quaestiones et Responsiones’ sur l’Ecriture sainte,” RevBibl 42 (1933): 328–32; Ps.-Dionysios (6th century), De ecclesiastica hierarchia, 7 (“Rites for the Dead”) (PG 3:552D–569A); and Anastasios of Sinai (d. after 700), Quaestiones, 89–91 (PG 89:716–721C). 25 Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Concerning those who have died: “Our irrational attachment to transient beauty, regardless of what it happens to be, causes intense suffering. . . . On the other hand, the pain of death acts as a midwife to another life” (ed. G. Heil, GNO 9.1 [Leiden, 1967], 28, lines 9–10, 47, lines 1–2). For Nyssa’s exegesis of the Lucan parable, see M. Alexandre, “L’intepre´tation de Luc 16.19–31 chez Gre´goire de Nysse” (above, note 7).

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the soul, while the soul, after death, was equally marked by the memory of its life in the body.26 The Byzantines were sensitive to the lack of correspondence between inner states and outer expressions, and they knew that one’s outward appearance by no means reveals what goes on within (cf. Matt. 23:27–28). After death, however, the soul was thought to become a mirror of the self, reflecting its inner dispositions and ruling passions. Between the body and the soul, an exchange took place producing, on the one hand, the subjective corporeality of relics and, on the other, like the picture of Dorian Gray, the corporeal subjectivity of the soul. The fluid self acquires, as it were, a material body and appearance as the finite is inserted into infinity. A striking example of this belief can be found in a sermon by Dorotheos of Gaza (b. ca. 506) on the “Fear of the Punishment to Come.” 27 According to Dorotheos, the various thoughts and mental images to which the soul is habitually attached in life will constitute its new environment and reality as consciousness is carried over into death. Thoughts and memories will have as much power over the self as they did in life, indeed more so, notes Dorotheos, inasmuch as they can now be avoided through the distractions of the body. After death, however, repressed memories and unfulfilled desires will reaffirm themselves, occurring and recurring with massive force and unmitigated intensity, from which there will be no possibility of escape, for there will be no dispassionate point of reference. This psychological model is taken in a somewhat different direction by Niketas Stethatos (ca. 1005–90), who is also attentive to the role that memory and consciousness play in the period between death and resurrection. In his treatise On the Soul (written ca. 1075),28 Stethatos argues that soul and body are a complex, interactive unity, and that, without the body, the human person is incomplete.29 After sorting out what faculties are proper to the body, what to the soul, and what to the union of the two (§12.64–67), 26 Charles Barber has recently noted that there exists no major study of the “function and significance of memory” in the Byzantine world (see his “The Truth in Painting: Iconoclasm and Identity in Early-Medieval Art,” Speculum 72.4 [1997]: 1028, n. 32). Similar studies for the medieval West, however, provide important leads. See, e.g., O. G. Oexle, “Memoria und Memorialbild,” in Memoria. Der geschichtliche Zeugniswert des liturgischen Gedenkens im Mittelalter, ed. K. Schmid and J. Wallasch (Munich, 1984), 384–440. Oexle attends to how the physically absent (living and dead) were rendered present through the invocation of their names in a liturgical setting, and how liturgy created communities of memory in which the living and the dead could be gathered together. See also M. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1992); M. McLaughlin, Consorting with Saints: Prayer for the Dead in Early Medieval France (Ithaca, N.Y., 1994); and B. Gordon and P. Marshall, eds., The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2000). 27 Dorotheos of Gaza, Discourse 12 (ed. L. Regnault, SC 92 [Paris, 1963], 384–88; trans. E. P. Wheeler [Kalamazoo, Mich., 1977], 183–86); the narrative and rhetorical power of this text resists paraphrase; cf. Plato, Gorgias, 525. 28 J. Darrouze`s, ed., Nice´tas Ste´thatos. Opuscules et lettres, SC 81 (Paris, 1961), 56–153; cf. D. Tsamis, JH Telei´w´ pou kata` Nikh´ tan to` n Sthqa´ ton (Thessalonike, 1971). si" tou' Anqrw j 29 Like Gregory of Nyssa, Stethatos notes that body and soul are a “coexistent and contemporaneous” (sunu´ parkton, oJmo´ cronon) microcosm, although his chief paradigm for this relationship is the christology of Chalcedon: “God united [in the human being] two natures [i.e., body and soul] in one hypostasis without confusion” (§3.14, p. 78, line 9; cf. line 12, where the two natures are said to subsist in “one prosopon”). Cf. Symeon the New Theologian, Second Practical Chapters, 2.23, 3.62 (ed. J. Darrouze`s, SC 51 [Paris, 1957]; trans. P. McGuckin [Kalamazoo, Mich., 1982], 69–70, 96); and Second Theological Discourse (ed. J. Darrouze`s, SC 122 [Paris, 1966], 136, lines 96–99; trans. P. McGuckin, 126).

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Stethatos considers what from among these survives the transition from life to death (§13.68–78). Like “marks on a tablet,” he says, the soul registers the impressions it has received in life, each one tinting the soul’s complexion in one way or another.30 In addition to the indelible etchings of memory that are common to all human souls, the souls of the saints retain various modes of noetic perception and transcendental knowledge,31 and after death they find themselves in exalted, heavenly places (topoi) constellated according to their distinctive charisms and affections (§70). Stethatos later indicates that these topoi are actually “angelic powers,” or the “shadows cast by angelic wings,” or, in one instance, “the wings of Christ” (§72–73, §79–80).32 Sheltered within these sacred pinions, the saintly soul rests in the hope of future blessings, remembering its former good deeds and sensing the prayers and works of mercy offered on its behalf (§72). Watching over the soul is its guardian angel, who prompts the soul to a remembrance of things past and draws its attention to the good things currently being done for it on earth. Although the saintly soul is “at rest” with respect to the faculties it employed while in the body, its memory becomes clear and focused, and it is vividly conscious of the memorials, liturgies, and feasts held in its honor (§73).33 Here Stethatos gestures toward the experience of dreams in sleep (§73) as an analogy for the mind’s postmortem preoccupation with its past deeds and future prospects, as well as for its active independence from the passivity of the sleeping (i.e., dead) body. That the context 30 This is the result of the soul’s “power of receptivity” (antileptike dynamis). Cf. Symeon the New Theologian, Discourse, 28.6 (trans. C. J. de Catanzaro, Classics of Western Spirituality [New York, 1980], 299). Dorotheos had similarly noted that “the souls of the dead remember everything that happened here—thoughts, words, desires—nothing can be forgotten . . . whatever is in a man here is going to leave the earth with him, and going to be with him there” (trans. Wheeler, 185–86). 31 Namely, the “knowledge of beings, immanent reason, noetic sensation, and the intuition of intelligibles,” all of which are part of the vocabulary of mysticism and mystical experience; cf. Tsamis, “H Telei´wsi", 102–8, 117–37. 32 Stethatos’ placement of departed souls among the angels is partly a response to those who sought to place them in an earthly paradise, a problem he addresses in his sequel to On the Soul called On Paradise, and “ qw", vol. 1, pts. a concern shared by Philip Monotropos (fl. ca. 1100), Dioptra, 4.10 (ed. S. Lauriotes, in JO A 1–2 [Athens, 1919–20], p. 222). For both Stethatos and Monotropos, paradise had been superseded by the kingdom of heaven through the death and resurrection of Christ; cf. M. Chalendard, Nice´tas Ste´thatos: Le Paradis spirituel et autres textes annexes (Paris, 1944); V. Grumel, “Remarques sur la Dioptra de Philippe le Soli¨randner in Akrothinia [Vienna, 1964], taire,” BZ 44 (1951): 198–211, esp. 208–9 (with additions by W. Ho 23–40); and A. Wenger, “Ciel ou Paradis: Le se´jour des ˆames, d’apre`s Philippe le Solitaire, Dioptra, livre IV, chapitre X,” BZ 44 (1951): 560–69. Earlier writers held precisely this view (e.g., Photios, Amphilochia, 15.2 [PG 89:715–26]), as did Michael Glykas, Theological Chapters, 11 (ed. S. Eustratiades [below, note 36], 1:136– 49), largely on the basis of Luke 23:43. Cf. Symeon the New Theologian, On Penitence, 9: “When he went down to hell he raised them up from there and restored them, not to paradise whence they had fallen, but to the very heaven of heaven (cf. Ps. 68:34)” (trans. de Catanzaro, 99). On the “wings of Christ” as a symbol of “protective (skepastikon) power,” see Ps.-Basil, Adversus Eunomium, 5 (PG 29:757D), cited by Theodore of Stoudios, Antirrheticus, 2.44 (PG 99:384C; trans. C. Roth, St. Theodore the Studite, On the Holy Icons [Crestwood, N.Y., 1981], 71). 33 Or, conversely, outraged at breaches in these rituals; cf. the 11th-century Apocalypsis Anastasiae, in which the female Saints Tetrade, Paraskeve, and Kyriake (i.e., Saints Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday) complain to Christ about those who eat meat on Wednesdays and Fridays (days of fasting), or who work, or have sex with their spouses on Sundays (R. Holmberg, ed., Apocalypsis Anastasiae [Leipzig, 1903], 12–13). Cf. Eustratios, Refutation, 28 (ed. L. Allatius, p. 560, cited below, note 66), who notes that the dead are “conscious” (aijsqa´ nontai) of the memorials offered on their behalf.

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for these remarks is the cult of saints and relics seems evident, as when Stethatos further notes that good souls are fragrant, a sensation frequently associated with the mortal remains of holy persons (§79). The court philosopher Michael Psellos (1018–81) shares many of these concerns, although he discusses them in the terms and categories of Neoplatonic psychology and metaphysics. At death, the harmonics generated by the union of body and soul fall silent, and the soul of the sage begins its ascent into a “dawn beyond light,” being purged of its attachments to the body by the purifying fire of divinity. As the soul is increasingly assimilated to the life of God, its memory of life in the body begins to fade, although Psellos acknowledges that certain souls are entrusted providentially with the care of human beings and with the protection of cities and nations.34 Questions about the survival of memory and consciousness among the departed saints continued to be discussed in the following century, as evidenced in the twenty-first and twenty-second Theological Chapters of Michael Glykas (fl. 1150).35 Glykas deftly weaves together dozens of patristic sources, although Sophronios Eustratiades, who edited the Theological Chapters nearly a hundred years ago, noted that Glykas derived some of this material from the synaxarion of the Protopsychosabbaton, a compendious liturgical apology for the efficacy of prayers and memorial offerings for the dead.36 Paraphrasing a passage from Dorotheos of Gaza that is not cited in the synaxarion, Glykas states that the thoughts of sinful souls eternally return to the scenes of their crimes, and they can remember only those whom they sinned against, so that murderers, for example, can remember only the faces of their victims.37 In addition to these various psychological and mnemonic models, the Byzantines also developed a view of the afterlife loosely based on the postmortem experiences of Christ, whom scripture proclaimed to be the “firstborn of the dead,” a “second Adam” in solidar34 Michael Psellos, De omnifaria doctrina, 64 (“On the Separation of Body and Soul”), ed. L. G. Westerink (Nijmegen, 1948), 43; Philosophica minora, 1.40 (“On Hades”), ed. J. Duffy (Stuttgart-Leipzig, 1992), 144–45; Philosophica minora, 2.13, ed. D. J. O’Meara (Stuttgart-Leipzig, 1989), 34–35, 44–45; ibid., 2.20 (“On the Memory of the Soul after Death”), 93–95; ibid., 2.15 (“Against Origen”), 75–76; ibid., 2.16 (“On the Soul”), 76–77; ibid., 2.23 (“On How the Soul Enters and Departs from the Body”), 98–99; ibid., 2.24 (“On the Soul”), 99–100; ibid., 2.27 (“On the Soul”), 102–3; cf. P. Joannou, Christliche Metaphysik in Byzanz: Die Illuminationslehre des Michael Psellos und Johannes Italos (Ettal, 1956), 124–39. I am grateful to Stratis Papaioannou for these references. 35 This important work has never been studied. See the initial assessment of P. Magdalino, The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos, 1143–1180 (Cambridge, 1993), 366–82, esp. 370–82, who notes that “common to [these chapters] is a preoccupation with the relationship between body and soul, the corruptible and the incorruptible, and death and immortality in human nature. . . . [Glykas’] preoccupation with the creation and corruption of matter, the relationship of body and soul, and the programme of Divine Providence, reflects a concern to define the Orthodox position on matters where it was in danger of being contaminated by dualist heresy and Hellenic philosophy. The Bogomil doctrine of the irredeemable corruption of the physical world, and Neoplatonic ideas of the eternity of matter and metempsychosis . . . undoubtedly contributed to the climate of debate and uncertainty which Glykas reflects.” 36 S. Eustratiades, ed., Eij" ta` " ajpori´a" th'" Qei´a" Grafh'" Kephalaia, 2 vols. (Athens, 1906; Alexandria, 1912), 1:240 n. 1 (⫽ Eustratiades’ note); Theological Chapters, 21–22 ⫽ pp. 240–46, 247–57; cf. Theological Chapters, 9 (p. 120); for the synaxarion notice, cf. Triv´ dion Katanuktiko´ n (Athens, n.d.), 22–24. I follow Magdalino (above, n. 35) in translating the title of Glykas’ work as the Theological Chapters. 37 Theological Chapters, 20 (p. 242, lines 6–13); cf Ps.-Athanasios, Quaestiones ad Antiochum, 32: “The souls of the righteous remember us, but not the souls of sinners in Hades, for whom it seems likely that they think only about the punishment that awaits them” (PG 28:616D).

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ity with humanity even in his death (cf. Col. 1:18; 1 Cor. 15:20–22). The Byzantine christomimetic tradition was deeply enculturated, and the exemplum Christi was a master metaphor according to which the relationship between body and soul in human beings was seen as analogous to that obtaining between humanity and divinity in Christ.38 Christology, in other words, provided an illuminating paradigm for anthropology and stimulated symbolic reflection on the fate of souls after death, a situation that John Meyendorff has aptly characterized as a “christocentric eschatology.” 39 Generally speaking, the exemplary death of Christ established a fundamental law of human existence, namely, temporary residence in an interim state until the general resurrection of the dead. Based on Matthew 10:24 (“A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master”), the soul’s tarriance between death and resurrection became a universal lex mortuorum, although the souls of the righteous could now endure this experience in solidarity with Christ, to whom they were mimetically linked: “For where I am, you will also be” (John 14:3).40 Similarly, the Byzantine practice of conducting memorial services on the third and the fortieth day after death was seen by some as a ritual imitatio of Christ’s resurrection on the third day and of his ascension into heaven on the fortieth.41 However, this was by 38 This analogy, popularized by Cyril of Alexandria and turned into a polemical device by Severos of Antioch, came to be seen as inadequate and was eventually rejected; cf. Leontius Scholasticus, De Sectis (PG 86:1245A–1249D); Justinian, Contra Monophysitas (PG 86:1116–17; trans. K. Wesche [Crestwood, N.Y., 1991], 38–40), and Confessio rectae fidei (PG 86:1004C; trans. Wesche, 171–72); and John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa, 33 (ed. B. Kotter, vol. 2 [Berlin, 1973], 2, 113), although later writers continued to make use of it. See also P. Schwanz, Imago Dei als christologisch-anthropologisches Problem bis Clemens von Alexandrien (Halle, 1970); R. Norris, “Christological Models in Cyril of Alexandria,” StP (1975): 255–68; idem, “The Problem of Human Identity in Patristic Christological Speculation,” StP 17.1 (1982): 147–59; P. Stockmeier, “Das anthropologische Modell der Spa¨tantike und die Formel von Chalkedon,” Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum 8 (1976): 40–52; K.-H. Uthemann, “Das anthropologische Modell der Hypostatischen Union,” Kleronomia 14 (1982): ¨hen Kirche bis Chalcedon 215–32; F. Gahbauer, Das anthropologische Modell. Ein Beitrag zur Christologie der fru (Wu ¨ rzburg, 1984); and A. Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, vol. 2.2 (Louisville, Ky., 1995), 34–39, 498–500. 39 J. Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology (New York, 1983), 221. 40 This idea can be found already in Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 6.31.2, citing Matt. 10:24 (SC 153, p. 395); cf. Michael Glykas, Theological Chapters, 20 (1:245, lines 15–25), citing Andrew of Crete (PG 97:1049–52); and Philip Monotropos, Dioptra, 2.11: “If you have heard that souls are in Hades, they are not, as formerly, in pain and torment, but in comfort and rest” (ed. S. Lauriotes [above, note 32], p. 93). Philip cites John 14:3 in this context at Dioptra, 4.11 (p. 222); cf. J. Lebourlier, “A propose de l’e´tat de Christ dans la mort,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et the´ologiques 46 (1962): 629–49; 47 (1963): 161–80. See also Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit, 35: “How can we accomplish the descent into Hades? By imitating through baptism the descent of Christ into the tomb” (ed. B. Pruche [Angers, 1947], 169). The only exceptions to this universal law were Enoch (cf. Gen. 5:24) and Elijah (cf. 2 Kings 2:11–12), who had been bodily translated to heaven prior to their death. 41 Cf. Apostolic Constitutions, 8.42.1: “Celebrate the 3rd-day of those who have fallen asleep with psalms and prayers, on account of the one who rose on the 3rd-day” (ed. M. Metzger, SC 336 [Paris, 1987], 258); and Eustratios, Refutation, 29 (ed. L. Allatius, pp. 551–52, cited below, note 66), who notes that “the 3rd-day memorial is a typos of the 3rd-day resurrection, the 9th of the [postresurrection] appearance of Christ on the 8th-day plus one” [i.e., not counting the day of the resurrection], and the 40th a typos of the ascension.” See also Macarius of Alexandria, Sermo de exitu animae: “On the 3rd-day after death, Christian souls are summoned to heaven to bow before God in imitation of Christ’s resurrection” (PG 34:389BC); and the study by ˆme apre`s la mort,” Le A. van Lantschot, “Re´ve´lations de Macaire et de Marc de Tarmaqa sur le sort de l’a Muse´on 63 (1950): 178–80. For later writers on this theme, see Philip Monotropos, Dioptra, 2.11, 4.8 (ed. S. Lauriotes, p. 94, 220, cited above, note 32); Symeon of Thessalonike (archbp., 1416–29), De ordine sepulturae, 155 (PG 155:688–92); and Joseph Bryennios, First Sermon on the Last Judgment (ed. E. Boulgaris, vol. 2 [Leipzig, 1768; repr. Thessalonike, 1990], 300, 304–5).

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no means a universally accepted tradition, and others understood these memorials as marking the gradual dissolution of the body in a process that reversed its initial formation in the womb. The human face, for example, was believed to take form on the third day after conception, and therefore said to decompose on the third day after death. At the same time, the gradual decay of the body on the third (and the fortieth) day after death coincided with stages in the soul’s formation in the womb of the afterlife. These were critical days for the travail of the soul, during which time the body of the church assembled for corporate prayer. This, in fact, is the tradition followed by the synaxarion notice mentioned above.42 The Byzantine iconographic tradition provides further examples of mimetic connections between the death of Christ and that of his followers. In his study of the iconography of the “Man of Sorrows,” Hans Belting has noted that the “sleep” of Christ portrayed in these images is “spatially and temporally undetermined,” and that the metaphor of “death-sleep” suggests the paradoxical simultaneity of human death and divine life in the one person of Christ. This was also noted by Anna Komnene (1083–1153), who described one of these portraits as an image of the “Bridegroom and Judge” (i.e., suffering humanity and omnipotent divinity) who “sleeps the sweet sleep.” 43 With respect to the image of the Anapeson, Belting notes that the reclining figure of the drowsy Christ Emmanuel is, again, asleep and at the same time awake, a paradox that anticipates the sleep of death in the tomb.44 The symbolism is derived from a curious combination of Hebrew scripture and Greek legend. Alluding to the “lion of Judah” in Genesis 49:9, the reclining Christ was said to be “crouching down (anapeson), having fallen asleep as a lion” (cf. Gen. 49:9; Rev. 5:5), an animal that was fabled to sleep in its lair with its eyes open. As such, it was seen as an image of Christ, who “did not close the eye of his divinity as he slept in his tomb.” 45 Philip Monotropos (fl. ca. 1100), a contemporary of Anna Komnene, invokes the symbolism of the Anapeson in his discussion of Christ’s The main witness to this tradition is a passage in the De mensibus of John Lydos (ca. 490–565), a work dealing with the history of calendars and feasts (ed. R. Wu ¨ nsch, [Leipzig, 1898], 84–86); cf. the study of G. Dagron, “Troisie`me, neuvie`me et quarantie`me jours dans la tradition byzantine: Temps chre´tien et anthropologie,” in Le temps chre´tien de la fin de l’antiquite´ au moyen ˆage, IIIe–XIIIe sie`cles (Paris, 1984), 419–30. Note that the synaxarion (cited above, note 36) focuses not on the face, but the heart, which appears on the 3rd day of gestation, solidifies into flesh on the 9th day, and on the 40th assumes full form. On the 9th day after death, the body disintegrates, and the heart alone survives until the 40th day, when it too is dissolved. 43 H. Belting, The Image and Its Public in the Middle Ages. Form and Function of Early Paintings of the Passion, trans. M. Bartusis and R. Meyer (New York, 1991), 103–4, 118–20; cf. H. Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, trans. E. Jephcott (Chicago, 1994), 270–71. 44 Belting, The Image and Its Public, 104. In the church of Manasija, the Anapeson is paired with the image of the “Souls of the Righteous in the Hand of God” (Wis. 3:1; cf. above, note 8) above the tympanum of the western door of the nave, with David and Solomon standing at either side. David’s scroll reads: “Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord?” (Ps. 44/43:23), while Solomon’s reads: “The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God” (Wis. 3:1); S. Stanojevic´, Le monaste`re de Manasija (Belgrade, 1928), XVII; cf. A. Xyngopoulos, Thessalonique et la peinture mace´donienne (Athens, 1955), pl. 18.2. Der Nersessian, “Program and Iconography,” 332, notes that this is a “symbolic representation of Christ’s messianic mission,” but seems to miss the connection between the sleeping Christ and the sleeping souls. Note that David and Solomon also figure prominently in the iconography of the resurrection; cf. A. Kartsonis, Anastasis. The Making of an Image (Princeton, N.J., 1986), 186–203. 45 In the words of Leontios of Constantinople, On Easter (cf. Physiologos, 5–6), trans. P. Allen with C. Datema, Leontius Presbyter of Constantinople (Brisbane, 1991), 112 and n. 59. 42

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descent into Hades, and it eventually entered the hymnology of Christ’s ritual burial service on Holy Saturday.46 It would seem, then, that based on the example of Christ, the discontinuity of death had become no more permanent than “such stuff as dreams are made of.” However, the various similarities between Christ and his human followers paled with respect to one fundamental difference. It was a basic dogma of the early church that, while Christ was born in the “likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom. 8:3), he had nevertheless lived his life on earth without sinning (cf. Heb. 4:15; 7:26; 1 Pet. 2:22; John 8:46; 1 John 3:5). At the time of his voluntary death, therefore, he could not be held accountable to the “one who holds the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb. 2:14), and on the eve of his passion he announced that the “ruler of this world is coming, and in me he will find nothing” (cf. John 14:30).47 The same could hardly be said of his fallible followers (cf. 1 Cor. 1:5, 6:11; Eph. 2:1–3; Col. 3:5–7). DANGEROUS PASSAGE If a “Christian end to our lives, painless, without shame, and peaceful” (Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom) was the ideal for which the church prayed and to which the Byzantines aspired, not all were fortunate enough to attain it. Patristic and Byzantine literature contains harrowing accounts of the soul’s experience immediately after its departure from the body, at which time it meets its own conscience by means of graphic encounters with its thoughts, words, and deeds, as its life is critically screened and reviewed.48 These encounters often take the form of prosecution by demons in the charged setting of a courtroom, with angels acting as counsels for the defense. At other times, the scene shifts to an aerial “tollgate” (telonion) where souls ascending to heaven are detained by passport control and have their moral baggage inspected by demonic customs officials.49 The First 46 Cf. Philip Monotropos, Dioptra, 2.11 (ed. S. Lauriotes, p. 94, cited above, note 32); and the lauds of Holy Saturday matins: “Come and behold today the one from ‘Judah who fell asleep,’ and let us cry out prophetically to him: ‘Crouching down, you slept as a lion. Who shall dare to rouse you, O king?’” Note also that the “sleep” of Adam (during the creation of Eve) typified the “sleep” of Christ on the cross, from whose side emerged the ekklesia (Gen 2:21, John 19:34); cf. Methodios, Symposium, 2.2–4, 3.8 (PG 18:49–53, 72–73). 47 Cf. Basil, Hom. 11 (on Ps. 7): “The noble athletes of God, who have wrestled with invisible enemies their whole life, after they reach the end of life, are examined by the ‘prince of the world.’ . . . You may learn this from the Lord himself who said concerning the time of his passion, ‘Now the prince of the world is coming, and in me he will have nothing’ (John 14:30). He who had committed no sin said that he had nothing” (PG 29:232–33; trans. A. C. Way, Saint Basil: Exegetic Homilies, The Fathers of the Church, 46 [Washington, D.C., 1963], 167–68); cited by Michael Glykas, Theological Chapters, 20 (ed. Eustratiades, p. 242, lines 15–20, cited above, note 36). 48 On the whole subject, see C. Zaleski, Otherworld Journeys. Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times (New York, 1987); and C. Carozzi, Le voyage de l’aˆme dans l’au-dela` d’apre`s la litte´rature: Ve–XIIIe sie`cle (Paris, 1994). Sometimes these experiences occur in corpore as an agonizing struggle at the deathbed (psychomachia), as, for example, in the tale of Stephanos cited by John Climacus, Ladder, 7 (“On Mourning”) (PG 88:812BD). 49 ˆle du de´mon au See G. Every, “Toll Gates on the Air Way,” EChR 8 (1976): 139–51; and J. Rivie`re, “Ro jugement particulier chez les pe`res,” RSR 4 (1924): 43–64. For the social context, cf. the vivid descriptions in Basil, Against Usury (Hom. 12, on Ps. 14; PG 29:268–80; trans. FOTC 46, 181–91); and W. R. Farmer, “Who Were the ‘Tax Collectors and Sinners’ in the Synoptic Tradition?” in From Faith to Faith (Pittsburgh, 1979), 167–74; J. Gibson, “Tax Collectors and Prostitutes in First-Century Palestine: Mt. 21.31,” JTS 32 (1981): 429–33; F. G. Downing, “The Ambiguity of ‘the Pharisee and the Toll-Collector’ in the Graeco-Roman World of Late Antiquity,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 54 (1992): 80–99; H. Saradi, “The Byzantine Tribunals: Problems

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Apocalypse of James (33:2–36.1) combines elements from both and describes a trial held at each person’s death by three demons who “demand toll, and take away souls by theft.” 50 Despite the accretions of Christian morality and Byzantine bureaucracy, these narratives are little changed from ancient beliefs in the planetary spheres as the seats of vicious astral rulers who imprinted their vices on embryos at the moment of birth and hindered the soul’s flight to heaven after death. Safe passage was obtained only by imitating the gnostic savior, whose own successful escape became the referential paradigm for the postmortem experiences of his initiates.51 It is probably no coincidence that later Christian redactions of these narratives occur primarily in works by monastic writers, and in the lives of monastic saints, who understood themselves to be “living like angels” and thus locked in spiritual combat with demons.52 At the hour of death, these same forces struggle to claim the departing soul. In Athanasios’ Life of Antony, for example, the saint has a vision of souls ascending from the earth, as a grotesque giant gnashes its teeth and clutches at those that were “accountable to him.” 53 A similar vision in the Bohairic life of Pachomios depicts three angels escorting shimmering souls to heaven on a pure cloth, while dark, sinful souls are torn out by fishhooks and dragged to hell tied to the tail of a “spirit horse.” 54 in the Application of Justice and State Policy (9th–12th c.),” REB (1996): 165–204. For a full-length study, see E. Badian, Publicans and Sinners: Private Enterprise in the Service of the Roman Republic (Ithaca, N.Y., 1972; repr. 1983). I am thankful to Susan Holman for many of these references. 50 Trans. W. Schoedel in The Nag Hammadi Library in English, ed. J. Robinson (Leiden, 1996), 265–66. Much of the Apocalypse is concerned with various formulae (probably related to burial rites) for escaping the celestial toll collectors. 51 On which, see I. Culianu, Expe´rience de l’extase: Extase, ascension et re´cit visionnaire de l’helle´nisme au Moyen ˆ Age (Paris, 1984), rev. and expanded in idem, Psychoanodia, vol. 1 (Leiden, 1983); and idem, Out of This World (Boston, 1991). See also T. Abusch, “Ascent to the Stars in a Mesopotamian Ritual: Social Experience and Religious Metaphor,” and A. Yarbo Collins, “The Seven Heavens in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses,” both in Death, Ecstasy, and Other Worldly Journeys, ed. J. Collins and M. Fishbane (Albany, 1995), 15–39 and 59–93; and S. Johnston, “Rising to the Occasion: Theurgic Ascent in Its Cultural Milieu,” in Envisioning Magic, ed. P. Scha¨fer and H. Kippenberd (Princeton, N.J., 1997), 165–94. 52 Zaleski, Otherworld Journeys, 167, notes that some of this may be the result of the “sensory deprivation and perceptual isolation” characteristic of the ascetic life, a theme that has been studied in detail by V. MacDermot, The Cult of the Seer in the Ancient Middle East. A Contribution to Current Research on Hallucinations Drawn from Coptic and Other Texts (London, 1971). Dorotheos prefaces his discussion of postmortem pangs of conscience with the following: “Do you want me to give you an example to make this clear? Suppose one of us were shut up in a dark cell with no food or drink for three days without sleeping or meeting anyone, or psalmodizing, or praying, and not even thinking of God. You know what his passions would do to him” (trans. Wheeler, 184). 53 Athanasios, The Life of Antony 65 (ed. G. J. M. Bartelink, SC 400 [Paris, 1994], 304); Athanasios, On the Psalms (PG 27:304A); cf. J. Danie´lou, “Les de´mons de l’air dans la vie d’Antoine,” in Antonius Magnus Eremita (Rome, 1956), 136–46; M. Alexandre, “A propos du re´cit de la mort d’Antoine. L’heure de la mort dans la litte´rature monastique,” in Le temps chre´tien (as above, note 42), 263–82; and D. Brakke, “Athanasius of Alexandria and the Cult of the Holy Dead,” StP 32 (1997):12–18. On the Origenism of Antony’s demonology, cf. S. Rubenson, The Letters of St. Antony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint (Minneapolis, 1995), 86–88. See also the fourth apophthegma of Theophilos, where demons “accuse our souls as in a lawsuit, bringing before it all the sins it has committed from youth until the time it has been taken away” (PG 65:200B; trans. B. Ward [Kalamazoo, Mich., 1975], 69–70, no. 4). The Menologion of Basil II contains an image of Antony watching the soul of Amoun transported to heaven by angels (Il Menologio di Basilio II [Turin, 1907], pl. 90). 54 See Pachomian Koinonia, vol. 1 (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1980), 105–9; cf. the first Greek life, 360–61, and F. Cumont, “Les vents et les anges psychopompes,” in idem, Pisciculi: Studien zur Religion und Kultur des Altertums (Mu ¨ nster, 1939), 70–75. See also A. Recheis, Engel, Tod und Seelenreise: Das Wirken der Geister beim Heimgang des Menschen in der Lehre der Alexandrinischen und Kappadokischen Va ¨tern (Rome, 1958), 169–77.

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The eleventh-century Life of Lazaros Galesiotes narrates the tale of a sinful layman who in a vision beheld his soul being tried in a courtroom after death, after which he resolved to become a monk. On his way to the monastery, night fell, and as he slept by the side of the road, he was awakened by a figure in the guise of a monk, who led him to a precipice from where he pushed him to his death. This episode was revealed in a dream to the abbot who beheld angels escorting the dead soul to heaven, although demons were also grasping at it, attempting to drag it downward. “Leave him to us,” the demons shouted, “for he is ours, and performed our deeds until the hour of his death. You have no grounds to take him, for you have nothing in him” (cf. John 14:30). In defense of their claim, the demons produce a catalogue55 of the man’s sins arranged under various headings. The angels argue that, on the contrary, the man intended to repent, and his intention was accepted by God. The demons object, arguing that the man “failed to confess [his sins] and did not truly repent.” At that point, the litigation is interrupted by a voice from heaven, which rules in favor of the defendant: “His desire to repent, to become a monk, and to cease from his evil ways is verified by his deeds. The fact that he failed to arrive at the monastery where he would have confessed and repented was not his fault, but yours, who hindered him on his way. Therefore, in place of the monastic labors that he would have performed, I accept his blood, which was shed unjustly by you.” With that, the demons vanish (“like smoke”), and the angels, rejoicing, carry the soul to heaven.56 Origen was among the first to make use of this (originally Egyptian?) tradition and did so on the basis of John 14:30.57 Cyril of Alexandria (378–444), like his predecessor Athanasios (d. 373), was also a confederate of the monks of Egypt, and the chief executive officer of a sprawling church bureaucracy. In one of his sermons, Cyril describes the soul’s progress through an infernal revenue service staffed by a swarm of “archons, cosmocrats, 55 The written catalogue of sins is based in part on Col. 2:12–15: “God made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, having canceled the bond (cheirographon) which stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them.” In patristic and Byzantine exegesis, this passage was merged with Eph. 2:2 and 6:12: “You were once dead through following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air. . . . For we are not contending against flesh and blood but against principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” See also Jude 9, where the archangel Michael and Satan quarrel over the body of Moses; cf. M. Stone, Adam’s Contract with Satan: The Legend of the Cheirograph of Adam (Bloomington, Ind., 2001). 56 Gregory Monachos, The Life and Conduct of Our Holy Father Lazaros Galesiotes, 132 (AASS, Nov. 3 [Brussels, 1910], 547–48). The questions posed by the demons in the life suggest monastic concern about the problem of incomplete penance, which may explain why this is one of the few such tales in which God himself intervenes in order to pronounce the final sentence. Anastasios of Sinai, qu. 83, was less certain about such cases, opining that “God alone knows” (PG 87:709–12). Note the parallel to the prebaptismal rite, itself a kind of courtroom drama with the exorcist as advocate, Satan as accuser, and God as judge; cf. A. Mingana, Commentary of Theodore of Mopsuestia on the Lord’s Prayer and on the Sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist, Woodbrooke Studies 6 (Cambridge, 1933), 31; H. Kelly, The Devil at Baptism: Ritual, Theology, and Drama (Ithaca, N.Y., 1985). 57 Origen, Hom. in Luc., 23 (PG 13:1862): “When this age is over, and our life is changed for another, we shall find some sitting at the ends of the world to do the business of a toll collector, looking us through with the greatest diligence lest something belonging to him should be found in us. The ‘prince of this world’ seems to me like a publican, as it is written of him, ‘he comes, and has nothing in me’” (John 14:30; cf. above, note 47); cf. Hom. 25 (ibid., 1893) and idem, De principiis, 2.11.6; Contra Celsum 6.22–23 and 6.31, which records a list of passwords that the Gnostics believed would grant them passage through the “eternally chained gates of the archons after passing through what they call the ‘Barrier of evil’” (trans. Chadwick, pp. 347–48). See also the Acts of Thomas, 148, 167, and the Apocalypse of Paul, 13–18.

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teloniarchs, logothetes, and praktopsephistai” (fiscal officials of low rank). At the first five of these weigh-stations (telonia), each of the bodily senses is closely scrutinized (“from the time of one’s youth until the hour of death”) beginning with sins of the mouth, followed by those of the eyes, the ears, the sense of smell, and touch (PG 77:1073B–1076B; cf. 27:665). The tradition of the tollgates was firmly established throughout the east long before the end of late antiquity,58 although it received typically Byzantine elaboration in the tenth-century Life of Basil the Younger (d. 944).59 Like a play within a play, the life describes the ordeal of a certain Theodora, a pious though not perfect woman, whose soul passes through a series of twenty-two tollgates arranged in three groups of seven, with a final examination for general “inhumanity and hardness of heart.” 60 The story proved to be quite popular and was known, for instance, to Meletios Galesiotes (ca. 1209–86), who mentions Theodora twice by name in the verses of his Alphabetalphabetos.61 It is worthy of note that Mark Eugenikos (d. 1445), who was undoubtedly familiar with the tradition of the demonic tollgates, failed to mention it in his polemics against purgatory at the Council of Florence (1438–39). The attempted cover-up was soon exFor Basil of Caesarea, see A. d’Ale`s, “Le Prince du sie`cle, scrutateur des ˆames selon saint Basile,” Recherches de Science religieuse 23 (1966): 325–28; cf. Macrina’s deathbed prayer: “Let the slanderer (baskanos) not stand in my way” (SC 178, p. 224); Ephrem Graecus, In secundo adventu (ed. S. Assemani [Rome, 1746], 275–76); John Chrysostom, Hom. in Mt., 54 (PG 58:532); Macarius, Hom. 43.9: “like the tax collectors who sit along the narrow streets and snatch at passers-by and extort from them, so also the demons watch carefully and grab hold of souls” (trans. G. Maloney, Classics of Western Spirituality [New York, 1992], 155; cf. Hom. 22, p. 222); John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 5, on the “impassable water of the spirits of the air” and the “rendering of accounts after death” (PG 88:773AB; trans. C. Luibheid, Classics of Western Spirituality [New York, 1982], 126); and ibid., 7, where a dying soul “seems to be rendering account to someone . . . charged with offenses of which he was innocent” (PG 88:812BD; trans. Luibheid, 142); Eustratios, Refutation, 27: “The Rich Man died ‘and was buried’ (cf. Luke 16:22), which means that he was unable to pass by the world ruler of darkness and his apostate powers and orders” (cf. Eph. 6:12) (ed. L. Allatius, pp. 537–39; cited below, note 66); Diadochos of Photiki, On Spiritual Knowledge, 100: the unrepentant “will not be able freely to pass by the rulers of the nether world” (ed. E. des Places, SC 5 [Paris, 1966]; trans. G. E. H. Palmer et al., Philokalia, vol. 1 [London, 1979], 295); Hesychios the Priest, On Watchfulness and Holiness, 161: a prayer that “the prince of this world and of the air (cf. John 14:30, Eph. 2:2) will find our misdeeds petty and few” (trans. Palmer, Philokalia, 1.190); Theognostos, On the Practice of the Virtues, 61: a good soul is greeted at death by an angel and “unharmed by the evil spirits” (trans. Palmer, Philokalia, 2.373). 59 The vita, which has a complicated textual tradition, has been edited by S. G. Vilinskii, Zhitie sv. Vasiliia novogo v russkoi literature, vol. 2 (Odessa, 1911); the recension of the vita containing the legend of Theodora has been edited by A. N. Veselovskii, “Razyskaniiakh v oblasti russkogo dukhovnogo stikha,” Sbornik Otdeleniia russkogo iazkya i slovesnosti Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk 46 (1889–90); 53 (1891–92); cf. C. Aggelides, JO Bi´o" tou' oJsi´ou Basilei´ou tou' Ne´ ou (Ioannina, 1980), esp. 178–87, which deals with the Theodora narrative. For an extensive paraphrase, see Every, “Toll Gates,” 142–48. See also Symeon the New Theologian, Hymn 28 (ed. L. Neyerand, SC 174 [Paris, 1971], p. 310.202–10); and Philip Monotropos, Dioptra, 5 (pp. 237–41). 60 Cf. Basil, Hom. 22 (on Ps. 114): “In twenty-one years a man is wont to undergo three variations and vicissitudes of age and life, and in each week (i.e., of seven years) its proper boundary circumscribes the past and displays a visible change . . . the youth imperceptibly disappears, and the old man is transposed into another form, so that life is wont to be filled with many deaths, not only by the passage of time, but by the lapses of the soul through sin” (PG 29:493 AB; trans. FOTC 46, 358). Note the rabbinic tradition in which Job asks not to be judged for the sins he committed before the age of twenty-two, i.e., the age of reasoned adulthood, and the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. 61 T. Simopoulos, ed., Mele´ tio" oJ Galhsio´ th" (Athens, 1978), no. 180 (“On the Remembrance of Death”), p. 492, line 54; Basil the Younger is also mentioned (p. 492, line 71); no. 181 (“On the Separation of the Soul and the Resurrection of the Body”), p. 493, line 19. On Meletios, see R. Macrides, “Saints and Sainthood in the Early Palaiologan Period,” in The Byzantine Saint, ed. S. Hackel (Birmingham, U.K., 1981), 81–82. 58

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posed, however, by Eugenikos’ disciple, Gennadios Scholarios (ca. 1400–1472) who, in one of his grand gestures toward the West, stated that the trial of the “tollgates” was, in fact, the Byzantine equivalent of purgatory, minus the fireworks.62 Indeed, the soul of Theodora was, in the end, spared the ordeal of the tollgates after her spiritual director, St. Basil the Younger, indulged her with a gold coin taken from the coffers of his own merits (§18.8). Scholarios’ intriguing assertion notwithstanding, these narratives were valued more for their power to catalyze religious conversion, as was the iconography of the Last Judgment, which was also considered instrumental in repentance and conversion, prompting in viewers the fear of punishment and damnation.63 The mere thought of rapacious tax collectors and grasping lawyers created great anxiety among the Byzantine populace and, as symbolic devices, were judged effective in fostering a sense of final reckoning and ultimate accountability. The salutary utility of these terrible little tales was not lost on their authors. The Life of Antony, for instance, notes that: “Having seen this [i.e., the vision of the ascending soul] . . . [Antony] struggled the more to daily advance,” adding that the saint shared the vision with others “for whom the account would be beneficial, that they might learn that discipline bore good fruit” (§66).64 THE SLEEP OF SOULS AND THE CULT OF SAINTS Unlike the souls of sinners, the souls of the saints, in virtue of their tax-exempt status, were thought to proceed more or less directly either to heaven, or to paradise, or to the bosom of Abraham, or to some such similar place of repose. They were, however, taxed by other problems.65 The absence of any official doctrinal pronouncements on the status 62 Gennadios Scholarios, On Purgatory, 2, ed. L. Petit et al., Oeuvres comple`tes de Georges Scholarios, vol. 1 (Paris, 1928), 533; idem, On the Fate of the Soul after Death, 7, ibid., 513; cf., with caution, H. C. Barbour, The Byzantine Thomism of Gennadios Scholarios (Vatican City, 1993). 63 See Theophanes Continuatus (ed. I. Bekker [Bonn, 1838], 164.8–16); cf. R. Stichel, Studien zum Verha¨ltnis von Text und Bild spa¨t- und nachbyzantinischer Verga¨nglichkeitsdarstellungen (Vienna, 1971), 33, 70–75. 64 SC 400, p. 310; cf. the psychomachia in the 4th apophthegma of Theophilos, which concludes with: “Where then is the vanity of the world? Where is vain glory? Where is carnal life? Where is pleasure? Where is fantasy? Where is boasting? Riches? Nobility? Father, mother, brother? . . . Since this is so, in what manner ought we not to give ourselves to holy and devout works? What love ought we to acquire? What manner of life? What virtues? What speed? What diligence? What prayer? What prudence? Scripture says, ‘In this waiting, let us make every effort to be found blameless and without reproach in peace’ (cf. 1 Cor. 1:7–8). In this way, we shall be worthy to hear it said: ‘Come, O Blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world’” (PG 65:200D–201A; trans. B. Ward, 70). Cyril of Alexandria, in his De exitu animi, poses a series of thirty such rhetorical questions, including: “Where now is the eloquence of rhetors, and their vain and clever tricks?” (!) (PG 77:1077CD). A similar vision in the life of Elias Speliotes concludes by asking: “How many tax collectors and publicans await us in our ascent? For at that time there shall be an exacting examination of thoughts, words, and deeds. And who, brethren, shall be found without fault at that hour? Thus we should continuously ponder these things and repeat them, safeguarding ourselves from every sin and vain word” (AASS, Sep. 3 [Paris-Rome, 1868]), 876. 65 For one thing, the greed of church officials and the popular demand for an unending supply of holy bones threatened to reduce the cult of saints to a Byzantine farce, as can be seen in the satire on relics by Christopher of Mytilene (ca. 1000–1068), who ridicules the “ten hands of the martyr Prokopios, the fifteen jawbones of Theodore, the eight feet of Nestor, the four skulls of George, the five breasts of Barbara, the twelve arms of Demetrios, the twenty skeletons of Panteleimon, and the sixty teeth of Thekla,” complaining that both naive faith and the desire for gain have transformed the martyrs into “beasts with many heads and dogs with many breasts, making Nestor an octopus, and Prokopios a hundred-handed giant [i.e., Aegaeon of Greek mythology].” Christopher’s cabinet of curiosities also contains the “hand of Enoch, the buttock of

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of the soul after death encouraged, or at least did not prevent, various factions and parties from contesting, challenging, and in some cases ultimately rejecting the church’s devotion to the cult of saints. They did so based on the belief that the souls of the dead (sainted or otherwise) were more or less inert and thus could not intervene in, or be influenced by, the affairs of the living. Extant are two major responses to these challenges, the first by Eustratios, a sixthcentury presbyter of Constantinople,66 and the second by John the Deacon,67 dated to some time in the eleventh century. Jean Gouillard has suggested that the positions criticized in these two works are a survival of the thnetopsychism encountered by Origen in Arabia, noted by Eusebios in his Church History, and listed as a heresy by John of Damascus.68 As its name suggests, thnetopsychism was the belief that the soul was mortal and died with the body at the moment of death. It is unclear if Arabian thnetopsychism is related to the Syriac tradition of the soul’s dormition espoused by writers like Aphrahat (d. ca. 345), Ephrem (d. 373), and Narsai (d. 502), according to whom the souls of the dead are largely inert, having lapsed into a state of sleep, in which they can only dream of their future reward or punishments.69 The Syriac tradition of the soul’s “sleep in the dust” (Job 21:26), with its links to the Old Testament and Jewish apocalyptic, stands as Elijah, and the finger of the archangel Michael,” to which he adds a “feather from Gabriel dropped in Nazareth, and a thrice-pupiled eyeball of a Cherubim,” Ad Andream Monachum, in Die Gedichte des Christophoros Mitylenaios, ed. E. Kurtz (Leipzig, 1903), no. 114, pp. 76–80. 66 Eustratios, Presbyter of Constantinople, A Refutation of Those Who Say That the Souls of the Dead Are Not Active and Receive No Benefit from the Prayers and Sacrifices Made for Them to God, in Leo Allatius, ed., De Utriusque Ecclesiae Occidentalis atque Orientalis Perpetua in Dogmate de Purgatorio Consensu (Rome, 1655), 336–580. Allatius’ Latin translation of this work was reprinted by J.-P. Migne, Theologiae cursus completus, vol. 18 (Paris, 1841), 465–514. Eustratios was the disciple of Eutychios of Constantinople, who died in 582, after which, according to J. Gouillard (below, note 67), the Refutation was written; cf. N. Constas, “An Apology for the Cult of the Saints in Late Antiquity: Eustratius Presbyter of Constantinople, De statu animarum post mortem (CPG 7522),” JEChrSt (forthcoming). Compare the earlier reactions of Proklos, Hom. 5 (PG 65:716BC); Theodoret, Curatio, 8.10 (SC 57 [Paris, 1958], 313); Basil of Seleucia, Or. 39 (PG 85:449); and Ps.-Chrysostom, In s. Thomam (PG 59:498). A corollary move was to reject the practice of liturgies and memorials for the dead, on which see Ps.-John of Damascus, De his qui in fide dormierunt (PG 95:269D). 67 John the Deacon, On the Veneration of the Saints. Addressed to Those Who Say That They Are Unable to Help Us after Their Departure from This Life, text in J. Gouillard, “Le´thargie des ˆames et culte des saints: Un plaidoyer ˆr,” TM 8 (1981): 171–86; cf. J. Haldon, “Supplementary Essay,” in The Miracles ine´dit de Jean Diacre et Maı¨sto of St. Artemios, ed. V. S. Crisafulli and J. W. Nesbitt (Leiden, 1997), 45–55; G. Dagron, “Holy Image and Likeness,” DOP 45 (1991): 32–33; idem, “L’ombre d’un doute: L’hagiographie en question, VIe–XIe sie`cle,” DOP 46 (1992): 59–68, esp. 45–47. 68 John of Damascus, Haeres. 90: “Thnetopsychists are those who say that human souls are like the souls of animals, and perish with their bodies” (ed. B. Kotter, Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, vol. 4 [Berlin, 1981], 57). Clement had earlier rejected the Greek version of thnetopsychism (cf. Plato, Phaedo, 96b4) in Paed. 1.6, but Origen notes that Lev. 17:14 had been used to support the theory of two souls, a higher and a lower, the latter present in the blood and subject to bodily desire and death: Dialogue with Heracleides (ed. J. Scherer, SC 67 [Paris, 1960], 76–110); cf. Origen, De princ. 3.4.2, and the notice by Eusebios, Historia ecclesiastica, 6.37 (Loeb, II [Cambridge, Mass., 1980], 90–91). 69 F. Gavin, “The Sleep of the Soul in the Early Syriac Church,” JAOS 40 (1920): 103–20, argues that the later tradition of Syriac “soul sleep” was actually Aristotelian, i.e., if the soul is the “form” of the body, then it cannot survive the body’s dissolution. But cf. P. Kru ¨ ger, “Le sommeil des ˆames dans l’oeuvre de Narsaı¨,” OrSyr 4 (1959): 193–210; idem, “Gehenna und Scheol in dem Schriftum unter dem Names des Isaak von Antiochen,” OKS 2 (1953): 27–79; E. Beck, “Ephra¨ms Hymnen u ¨ ber das Paradies,” Studia Anselmiana 26 (1951): 77–95; P. Gignoux, “Les doctrines eschatologiques de Narsai,” Oriens Syrianus 11 (1966): 321–52, 461–88, and 12 (1967): 23–54; M.-J. Pierre, Aphraate le Sage Persan. Les expose´s, SC 349 (Paris, 1988), 191–99.

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a corrective to overly Hellenized views of the afterlife, and was canonized at a Nestorian synod in the eighth century (786–787) presided over by Timothy I (d. 823), who rejected anything else as blatant Origenism.70 Gouillard notes that variations of thnetopsychism and hypnopsychism existed alongside the views of the official church until the sixth century when they were resoundingly denounced by Eustratios. Responding to the charge that the souls of the dead are “incapable of activity” (ajnene´ rghtoi, a“praktoi) and “confined to one place” (§2), Eustratios perilously raised the stakes by arguing that, on the contrary, the souls of departed saints are even more active in death than they were in life (§14). Eustratios’ opponents further argued that the earthly appearances of saints are merely “phantasms” produced by a “certain divine power” which “assumes their shapes and forms” (§2; §13; §16). But this, Eustratios countered, would make a liar of God and “mislead the faithful as to the true nature of their benefactors.” It would, in more dramatic terms, reduce the church to a “stage of mimes and jesters . . . [or a] theater where actors don the masks of others, like the ‘false faces of hypocrites’ in the Gospel of Matthew” (Matt. 6:16) (§18). Apparently facing the same dilemma, Anastasios of Sinai (d. after 700) sought a compromise and suggested that the earthly appearances of saints are actually angels who take on the forms of various holy people, chiefly to show up in church on the appropriate feast day.71 Thnetopsychism continued to challenge the patience and ingenuity of church officials, as evidenced by writers such as John the Deacon, Niketas Stethatos, Philip Monotropos (Dioptra, pp. 210, 220), and Michael Glykas, all of whom are keenly interested in the survival of consciousness and memory among the souls of the departed saints. John the Deacon, for example, attacks those who “dare to say that praying to the saints is like shouting in the ears of the deaf, as if they had drunk from the mythical waters of Oblivion” (line 174). The allusion to the Platonic fountain of Lethe (Rep. 10.621C) in this passage suggests that the source of trouble may have been connected with the eleventh-century revival of Neoplatonic and Chaldean studies. Stethatos’ contemporary work On the Soul, for example, with its concern for the postmortem survival of memory and noetic sensation, contains a marginal note (§74) indicating that the work was written “against the Thnetopsychists.” Jean Darrouze`s, who edited this text, claims that this note was added by Stethatos himself after he republished the work as an attack on John Italos (p. 21, n. 3). Gouillard likewise sees the treatise by John the Deacon as yet another volley launched Similarly, Photios (ca. 810–893) notes that Stephen Gobar (d. 578?) rejected the eschatology of Gregory of Nyssa, and believed that after death the soul stays with its body in the grave (Bibliotheka cod. 232; PG 103:1093D–96A). On Timothy I and the synod, see A. Guillaumont, “Sources de la doctrine de Joseph Hazzaˆyaˆ,” Oriens Syrianus 3 (1958): 3–24; the anti-Origenist remarks occur in the Lettre de Timothe´e `a Boktis˘ˆo (ed. O. Braun, CSCO Scriptores Syr. vol. 30 [Louvain, 1953], p. 44); cf. O Braun, “Zwei Synoden des Katholikos Timotheos I,” OC 2 (1902): 308–9. 71 Anastasios, Quaestiones, 89 (PG 89:718CD); cf. Dagron, “Holy Image,” 32, who calls this a “striking masquerade regulated by God.” The Ps.-Athanasian version of this masquerade (Qu. 22; PG 28:612) is rejected as spurious by Glykas, who nevertheless notes that “sometimes they [i.e., the saints] themselves appear to us on their own, at other times, instead of them, angels are sent, and sometimes it is the grace of the Holy Spirit” (Theological Chapters, 21, p. 248). Note that not long after Eustratios’ Refutation, the Byzantine cult of saints faced a new threat in the form of Iconoclasm, a movement that may have derived some of its impetus from traditions and beliefs such as these; cf. the Life of Stephen the Younger, 29, where the Iconoclasts are said to have “blasphemed against the saints and the Theotokos, saying that they are unable to help (boethein) us ´ tienne le Jeune (Aldershot, 1997), 127, lines 24–26. after death,” ed. M.-F. Auze´py, La vie d’ E 70

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against this man, who was, in the words of Anna Komnene, “full of dialectical aggression” (Alex. 5.8). Italos, it will be remembered, was born in southern Italy and moved to Constantinople around 1049. His popular lectures on Neoplatonism stirred up considerable commotion resulting in his condemnation by a synod in 1082. Among the various charges brought against him was the crime of believing in the “transmigration of souls and their destruction and reduction to nothingness with the death of the body.” 72 Modern commentators have sought to absolve Italos of this charge on the grounds that he could not possibly have espoused Plato’s and Aristotle’s mutually contradictory theories about the fate of the soul after death. However, Byzantine Neoplatonism, much like the late antique variety, was in many ways an attempt to synthesize the academic with the peripatetic.73 In Plotinus and Porphyry, for instance, memory is acquired through the lower soul’s alienation in and through the body, causing the soul to forget the intelligible world and its presence in it. But the higher soul remains impassible, and at death, the lower soul ceases to exist, memory dies, and the intellect returns to God.74 The notion that human beings had two souls can be found already in Philo and Origen. Photios was accused of believing in two souls, one that sinned and another that did not.75 The tension between the two was precisely what Psellos was trying to resolve.76 See the synodikon, ed. J. Gouillard, “Le Synodikon de l’Orthodoxie. Edition et commentaire,” TM 2 (1967): 1–316; the quotation is from p. 57/59, lines 193–97, anathematizing those who “prefer the foolish wisdom of secular philosophers, and who follow their teachers, and who accept the transmigration of human souls, or who likewise believe that, like irrational animals, the souls of humans die with their bodies.” See also J. Gouillard, “Le proce`s officiel de Jean l’Italien. Les actes et leur sous-entendus,” TM 9 (1985): 133–74; L. Clucas, The Trial of John Italos and the Crisis of Intellectual Values in Byzantium in the Eleventh Century (Munich, 1981), 9–10, 53–54; and R. Browning, “Enlightenment and Repression in Byzantium in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries,” Past and Present 69 (1975): 3–23. Italos was further charged with rejecting the cult of saints, and with having thrown a stone at an icon of Christ, although another source notes that the abuse hurled was only verbal (cf. Gouillard, “Synodikon,” p. 59, lines 209–13; and idem, “Le proce`s officiel,” 155, 157). 73 Anna Komnene, Alex. 5.9 (ed. L. Schopen, CSHB 39 [Bonn, 1839], 262–63), notes that Italos, after being “promoted to the Chair of General Philosophy, with the title ‘Consul of the Philosophers,’ devoted his energies to the exegesis of Aristotle and Plato.” 74 For Plotinus, memory is acquired along with individuality and the desire to be different from the One, and thus appears only after the soul has left the higher region of the Intellect (Ennead, IV.4.5.11–13). Memory occurs only in time (IV.3.25.13–15). Conversely, the higher, ideal self can participate in Intellect only at a loss of individuality and memory, although in some sense consciousness is maintained (IV.4.2.30–2); cf. G. Gurtler, “Plotinus and the Alienation of the Soul,” in The Perennial Tradition of Neoplatonism, ed. J. J. Cleary (Leuven, 1997), 221–34; idem, Plotinus: The Experience of Unity (New York, 1988), 59–67 (“Consciousness and Memory”); and C. Steel, The Changing Self: A Study on the Soul in Later Neoplatonism: Iamblichus, Damascius and Priscianus, trans. S. Haasl (Brussels, 1978). 75 See Theophanes Continuatus (⫽ Symeon Magister), Chronographia, 35: “Photios ascended the pulpit and publicly stated that . . . every human being has two souls: one that sins and another that does not.” Photios is said to have dodged the accusation by means of “cunning arguments” (ed. I. Bekker [Bonn, 1838], 673). See also the tenth charge of the anti-Photian synod of 869: “Even though both the Old and the New Testaments teach that man has only a single rational and logical soul, and though this very same belief is confirmed by all the divine fathers and teachers of the church, there are certain people who nevertheless hold that man has two souls, an opinion that they maintain by means of certain incoherent arguments; these this holy and ecumenical council loudly condemns” (Mansi, vol. 16, p. 404, cf. 456, lines 31–33); cf. F. Dvornik, The Photian Schism (Cambridge, 1948), 33. 76 See esp., Psellos, Philosophica Minora, II.20 (“On the Memory of the Soul after Death”), ed. D. J. O’Meara (Stuttgart-Leipzig, 1989), 34–35; cf. O. J. F. Seltz, “Antecedents and Signification of the Term dipsychos,” JBL 72

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THE PERSISTENCE OF PURGATORY In the final years of the empire, eschatology became a major topic of discussion between the Greek and Latin churches.77 As mentioned above, the notion of the soul’s postmortem purification by fire was not entirely absent from the Greek theological tradition. At the reunion Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438–39), the Latins noted with approval the purgatorial theories of Gregory of Nyssa, to which many a pro-unionist head nodded in agreement. Taking up the gauntlet, Mark Eugenikos, the metropolitan of Ephesos (1392–1445), argued that Nyssa had spoken of such purgations with respect to all souls, and not just the souls of the wicked. Moreover, Eugenikos insisted that the purification described by Nyssa was envisioned as taking place, not immediately after death, but only after the Last Judgment, that is, not with the stripping off of the body in death, but with the restoration of the body in the resurrection. In any case, Eugenikos stated, Nyssa, at least on this point, had “missed the mark” (th'" ajkribei´a" parasfale´ nto"), and he suggested that they use Maximos the Confessor as a basis for reunion instead. Eugenikos, in fact, was being polite. The Latin invocation of highly suspect passages in Gregory of Nyssa appeared, in eastern eyes, to be nothing more than the heretical teaching of Origen, who likewise had envisioned an end to the fires of hell.78 As a disciple of Gregory Palamas (1347–59), Eugenikos tended to view all discussion of fire and light in the context of divinization experienced as a vision of the uncreated light of God. From Eugenikos’ point of view, Palamism rendered purgatory redundant, and he therefore took the discussion in a new and different direction. For Eugenikos, heaven and hell are names for the relative places produced by the eschatological encounter of created and uncreated energies. Face to face with eternity, the one and the same light of God will both illumine and incinerate, and between those two poles of experience there stands a “great chasm, which none may cross” (cf. Luke 16:2679). The spatialization of divine light was a central point in the theology of Basil of Caesarea, for whom the illuminating presence of the Holy Spirit was the dwelling place of 66 (1947): 211–19; R. Ferwerda, “Two Souls: Origen’s and Augustine’s Attitude toward the Two Souls Doctrine. Its Place in Greek and Christian Philosophy,” VChr 37 (1983): 360–78; G. Stroumsa and P. Fredrikson, “The Two Souls and the Divided Will,” in Soul, Self, and Body in Religious Experience, ed. A. Baumgarten, J. Assmann, and G. Stroumsa (Leiden, 1998), 198–217; and G. Stroumsa, “The Two Souls,” in his Barbarian Philosophy: The Religious Revolution of Early Christianity (Tu ¨ bingen, 1999), 282–91. 77 For a summary of these discussions, see R. Ombres, “Latins and Greeks in Debate over Purgatory, 1230–1439,” JEH 35 (1984): 1–14; for the Council of Lyons, see V. Laurent and J. Darrouze`s, Dossier grec de l’Union de Lyon (1273–1277) (Paris, 1976), 497–501. For the beginnings of the debate, see Michael Glykas, Theological Chapters, 85 (p. 580); M. Roncaglia, Georges Bardane`s, me´tropolite de Corfou et Barthelemy de l’ordre Franciscain (Rome, 1953); and G. Dagron, “La perception d’une diffe´rence: Les de´buts de la ‘querelle du purgatoire’,” in Actes du XVe Congre`s d’Etudes Byzantines. Athe`nes, Sept. 1976, vol. 4 (Athens, 1980), 84–92. For general studies, see R. Ombres, The Theory of Purgatory (Dublin-Cork, 1978); J. Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. A. Goldhammer (Chicago, 1984). 78 Eugenikos, Oratio altera, chaps. 15–18 (ed. L. Petit, PO 15.1 [Paris, 1920; repr. Turnhout, Belgium, 1974], pp. 122–28); the quotation critical of Nyssa is from chap. 15 (p. 122, lines 28–29); on Maximos the Confessor, see chap. 18 (p. 82), citing Maximos, Quaestiones et Dubia, 13 (PG 90:796); for Eng. trans. and commentary, see P. Sherwood, The Earlier Ambigua of St. Maximus the Confessor (Rome, 1955), 215–19. 79 Eugenikos cites the Lucan parable in Oratio prima, chap. 14, no. 7 (PO 15, p. 58, lines 12–28); Oratio altera, chap. 4 (PO 15, p. 111, lines 20–30), and chap. 23, no. 7 (p. 147, lines 9–22).

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the sanctified.80 The elision of space with light was also a philosophical presupposition of Neoplatonic metaphysics,81 and while Eugenikos cites Dionysios the Areopagite directly, he found John of Damascus’ discussion of spatiality particularly valuable. According to the Damascene, “the ‘place’ (topos) of God is the ‘place’ where God’s energy is present . . . it is that which participates in God’s energy and grace.” 82 With the theology of Gregory Palamas, the late antique metaphysics of light received new vigor and expression, and it remained for Mark Eugenikos to extend that theology into the eschaton. For Eugenikos, the souls of the righteous dwell in the Spirit as in a kind of light-space, which they occupy and experience as pure vision (theoria), like figures shimmering in the gold ground of an icon, “sages,” as it were, “standing in God’s holy fire.” 83 The vision of God, according to Eugenikos, is unique to each soul and modifies spatial orientation by establishing particular modes of reference and relation.84 In one compelling image, he suggests that the souls of the righteous are like the friends of a king who have received invitations to a royal banquet. They move toward God with joy, beholding the palace looming on the horizon and contemplating with delight the hour of celebration.85 Eugenikos cites a similar passage from Gregory of Nazianzos who describes the soul as “graciously advancing forward (i”lew" cwrei') to God.” 86 Basil’s second doxology, which he defended against criticism, used the locative preposition “in” (ejn) as a way to characterize the Spirit’s function within the economy of creation and redemption; see his On the Holy Spirit, chaps. 25–26 (58–64), ed. B. Pruche (Angers, 1947), 219–31; cf. M. A. Donovan, “The Spirit: Place of the Sanctified in Basil’s De Spiritu Sanctu,” StP 17.3 (1982): 1073–84. See also H. Alfeyev, “The Patristic Background of St. Symeon the New Theologian’s Doctrine of the Divine Light,” StP 32 (1997): 231–38. 81 On which see L. Schrenk, “Proclus on Space as Light,” Ancient Philosophy 9 (1989): 87–94; cf. W. Beier¨r Philosophische Forschung 5 (1961): 334–62, repr. in Die waltes, “Plotins Metaphysik des Lichtes,” Zeitschrift fu Philosophie des Neuplatonismus, ed. C. Zintzen (Darmstadt, 1971), 75–115, with a Nachwort at 116–17; and F. Schroeder, Form and Transformation: A Study in the Philosophy of Plotinus (Montreal, 1992), 24–39. 82 Cited by Eugenikos, Responsio, chap. 2 (PO 15, p. 153, lines 21–24). The Areopagitical citations (Celestial Hierarchy, 15, and On the Divine Names, 1.4) are at ibid., p. 155, lines 15–27, and p. 156, lines 19–30. 83 Eugenikos has a rich vocabulary for the middle state of souls that have reposed “in faith.” Such souls reside in “appropriate places (prosh´ konte" to´ poi) and are entirely at rest.” They are “free in heaven with the angels and near (para` ) to God himself, indeed they are in paradise from whence Adam fell” (Or. alt. chap. 3, p. 110, lines 5–9). Eugenikos notes that these souls enjoy the “blessed vision (qewri´a) of God and of God’s effulgence (ai“glh)” (ibid., lines 15–17). In a citation from Gregory of Nazianzos, the righteous are described as receiving the “ineffable light (a“fraston fw'") and the vision (qewri´a) of the holy and sovereign Trinity, shining more brightly and purely” (ibid., chap 9, p. 116, lines 29–31 ⫽ Nazianzos, PG 35.945). This state can be called the “vision (qewri´a) of God, or participation and communion (metoch` kai` koinwni´a) with God, or the kingdom of heaven,” Responsio, chap. 1 (p. 153, lines 15–17). 84 Oratio altera, chap. 23, no. 4 (p. 144, lines 24–30): “The most perfect reward for the pure of heart and soul is to see God, although all do not see God in the same way” (tou´ tou de` oujc oJmoi´w" ejpitugca´ nein a”panta"); cf. Argumenta decem adversus ignem purgatorium, no. 1 (ed. L. Petit, PO 17 [Paris, 1920], p. 285, lines 12–14): th' ejkklhsi´a dokei' polla` " mona` " ejn th' tou' Qeou' tiqeme´ nh qewri´a, ta´ xew´ n te kai` baqmw'n eijsagou´ sh diaforo´ thta, see also Scholarios’ last words to Mark: ajpodhmh´ seia" pro` " o’n hJtoi´masa" seautv' to´ pon th'" ajnapau´ sew" (PO 17, p. 352, lines 19–21). 85 Oratio altera, chap. 4 (p. 111, lines 9–13), citing Ps.-Athanasios, Quaestiones ad Antiochum, 20 (PG 28:609). 86 Oratio altera, chap. 7 (p. 115, line 12 ⫽ Nazianzos, Or, 7, PG 35:781). At rest and yet paradoxically in motion, the notion of the soul’s “stationary movement” is a spatial construal of the patristic doctrine of “sober inebriation” and “watchful sleep.” See, e.g., Maximos the Confessor, Thal. 50: “The soul, established by God on account of the natural unity in which it has come to exist, will acquire an ever-moving rest and a stationary uniformity of motion around the same, one, and only thing eternally” (PG 90:760A); cf. P. Plass, “‘Moving Rest’ in Maximus the Confessor,” ClMed 35 (1984): 177–90; P. Blowers, “Gregory of Nyssa, Max80

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The metaphor of movement, however, indicates that the souls of the righteous, despite their state of bliss, are nevertheless incomplete. These souls are merely on their way to the palace—they have not yet arrived at the banquet. Their “share (klh'ron) in the joy of the kingdom,” therefore, remains only “partial (merikh` ajpo´ lausi") and incomplete (ouj telei´a).” 87 Their imperfection, moreover, is not, in this case, a corollary to the theory of the soul’s perpetual progress in God. Rather, Eugenikos says that such souls are “incomplete and, as it were, cut in half (ajtelei'" o“nte" kai` oi»on hJmi´tomoi), because they lack the incorruptible body that they will receive after the resurrection.” 88 The disembodied soul had by this time been long understood to be but one piece of a psychosomatic puzzle apart from which it could not know perfection. Even after death, Eugenikos asserted, the soul continues to be drawn to (ejpicwria´ zein) the proximity of its body in language reminiscent of its sympathy and attraction toward God.89 Body and soul, being in this way identified, can be said to occupy the same space, intersecting at the site of their holy relics, which become sacred places of passage and encounter. Relics are thus conjunctive centers in which absolute space becomes identified with a particular place, coextensive with the physical space of the church building. As a result, the loca sanctorum have a complex, symbiotic relationship with the souls and bodies of their heavenly patrons. On the one hand, the saints are present in their temples as patrons and benefactors listening attentively and interceding (presbeu´ ein) on behalf of their clients.90 The church, on the other hand, through prayer, anamnesis, and especially through the eucharistic anaphora, can assist (bohqei'n), not just the departed faithful, but even the righteous in their eternal response to the divine call.91 But while the presence of the saints sanctifies the space of the liturgy, the very materiality of that space means that the saints present therein cannot at the same time be completely present with God in heaven. Indeed, Eugenikos notes, even angels cannot be in two places at once: Angels are sent by God from their spiritual place (to´ po") into the bodily world, and they are not simultaneously present or active (ejnergei'n) both here and there. While present imus the Confessor, and the Concept of ‘Perpetual Progress’,” VChr 46 (1992): 151–71; and L. P. Gerson, Kinesis Akinetos. A Study of Spiritual Motion in the Philosophy of Proclus (Leiden, 1973). 87 Oratio altera, chap. 3 (p. 109, line 35; p. 111, line 7), and chap. 6 (p. 114, lines 29–30); cf. Responsio, chap. 1 (p. 152, lines 11–19): “The souls of the saints have not yet (ou“pw) received their proper inheritance (oijkei'on klh'ron), and their enjoyment (ajpo´ lausi") of that blessed state (kata´ stasi") is entirely incomplete and lacking (ajtelh´ " ejsti pa'sa kai` ejlliph´ ") with respect to that restoration (ajpokata´ stasi") for which they hope.” 88 Oratio altera, chap. 6 (p. 114, lines 33–36); cf. the Acta Graeca (ed. J. Gill, Concilium Florentinum. Documenta et Scriptores 5.1 [Rome, 1953], pp. 25–26): “The souls of the righteous experience the vision of God perfectly (telei´w") as souls, but they will experience it more perfectly (telew´ teron) after the resurrection of their own bodies, and then they will shine forth like the sun, or indeed like the very light which came forth from our Lord Jesus Christ on Mount Tabor” (cf. Matt. 17:1–2). 89 Oratio altera, chap. 3 (p. 110, lines. 10–15). Mark develops this position in his treatise On the Resurrection, published by A. Schmemann, Qeologi´a 22 (1951): 53–60, see esp. p. 57, lines 137–39: kai` marturou'sin aiJ tw'n aJgi´wn yucai´, toi'" ijdi´oi" skh´ nesin ejpicwria´ zousi meta` teleuth` n kai` di∆ aujtw'n ejnergou'si. 90 Oratio altera, chap. 3 (p. 110, line 13). On the cult of the saints in the Palaiologan period, see A.-M. Talbot, Faith Healing in Late Byzantium (Brookline, Mass., 1983), and eadem, “New Wine in Old Bottles: The ´ urcˇic´ and D. MouRewriting of Saints’ Lives in the Palaeologan Period,” in The Twilight of Byzantium, ed. S. C riki (Princeton, N.J., 1991), 15–26. 91 Oratio prima, chap. 1 (pp. 39–41), chap. 3 (pp. 43–44); Oratio altera, chap. 12 (pp. 118–19).

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THE MIDDLE STATE OF SOULS there, they perform (ejnergei'n) their proper tasks of standing before God, beholding God, and praising God. But when present on earth they refrain for a time (scola´ zonte" pro` " mikro´ n) from their pure (ajkraifnh´ ") vision of God. John of Damascus, in his chapter on the Place of God, says that, “Although an angel is not contained physically in a place so as to assume form and shape, it is said to be in a place because of its being spiritually present and active (ejnergei'n) there according to its nature, and because of its being nowhere else, but remaining spiritually circumscribed in the place where it acts. For it cannot act in different places at the same time.” 92 . . . For the same reason the vision and enjoyment of the saints is incomplete (ejlliph´ ") since, taking thought for their brethren, they are turned (ejpistre´ fontai) toward the physical world and spend most of their time with us, working miracles through their sacred relics and being present to each one who prays to them. It is not possible for them to be active (ejnergei'n) and sympathetically present (sumpa´ scein) with the faithful and at the same time to enjoy the pure (ajkraifnh´ ") vision of God.93

The soul’s presence in the fragments of its body conditions and limits its presence to God. Although productive of a new mode of spatiality, it remains lodged within the space and time of the fallen world. Nevertheless, it lives with the sure “promise,” or “pledge” (ajrrabw´ n)94 of a perfect eschatological union with God. Until then, its proper mode of orientation is one of “expectation” (prosdoki´a), in which it “expects the resurrection of the dead” in solidarity with the entire body of the church.95 Sinful space, on the other hand, is of an entirely different order. It is devoid of light. It is a dark interval, isolated, confining, and stressful.96 Such space is occupied, and thereby produced, by the isolated soul in conjunction with its opaque, corrupted body. These souls also look to the future (prosdokw'nte"), but in fear and loathing of the coming judgment. Closed within inert and inactive space, like the souls immobilized in Dante’s frozen lake of Hell, they can make no movement or gesture toward God, but anxiously await A corollary notion was that “each angel has under it a different part of the earth or the universe,” according to Gregory of Nazianzos, Or. 28.31 (SC 250 [Paris, 1978], 174, lines 29–31); cf. idem, Or. 31.29: “The Holy Spirit penetrates (cwrou'n) them (i.e., the angels) simultaneously, though they are distributed in various places, which shows that the Spirit is not tied down by spatial limitations (ajperi´grapton)” (ibid., p. 336, lines 40–44); idem, On Rational Natures (ed. C. Moreschini and D. A. Sykes, St. Gregory Nazianzus: Poemata Arcana [Oxford, 1997], 26–32 [text and trans.], 195–214 [notes and commentary]); cf. J. Rousse, “Les anges et leur ministe`re selon Gre´goire de Nazianze,” Me´langes de sciences religieuse 22 (1965): 133–52; T. ˘pidlı´k, Gre´goire de Nazianze (Rome, 1971), 15–23. The visual and hence artistic circumscription of angels S was debated during the iconoclastic controversy, on which see K. Parry, Depicting the Word. Byzantine Iconophile Thought of the Eighth and Ninth Centuries (Leiden, 1996), 81–88. 93 Responsio, chap. 2 (p. 154, lines 10–26, and p. 156, lines 6–17); cf. On the Resurrection, 1 (A. Schemann, Qeologi´a 52 [1951]: 54.42–43): a“ggeloi perigraptoi` kai` a“llote a“llou" to´ pou" ejpilamba´ nonte" eij" diakoni´an ajpostello´ menoi. 94 Responsio, chap. 1 (p. 153, line 10). 95 Eugenikos’ doctrine of eschatological “expectation” is derived from the eleventh article of the NiceneConstantinopolitan creed (prosdokw' ajna´ stasin nekrw'n) and is attested at Oratio prima, chap. 1 (p. 40, line 15 ⫽ prosdoki´a); Oratio altera, chap. 3 (p. 110, line 25 ⫽ prosdokw'nte"); chap. 8 (p. 116, line 18 ⫽ prosdoki´a); chap. 11 (p. 118, line 2 ⫽ prosdokw'nte"); Responsio, chap. 6 (p. 163, line 3 ⫽ prosdoki´a), and On the Resurrection, 1 (Qeologi´a 52 [1951]: 53.5–6 ⫽ prosedo´ kwn). 96 Eugenikos notes that the souls of “sinners are locked in Hades, in what David calls ‘dark places and in the shadow of Death, laid within the lowest pit’ (Ps. 87:7), while Job calls it a ‘land of darkness and gloominess, a land of perpetual darkness where there is no light, neither can any one see the life of mortals’ (Job 10:22)”; Oratio altera, chap. 3 (p. 110, lines 18–24), drawing on Ps.-Athanasios, Quaestiones ad Antiochum, 19 (PG 28:609). 92

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the “tyranny of the light.” 97 These the church also prays for, so that they may find “some relief, if not complete deliverance” (mikra'" tino" ajne´ sew", eij kai` mh` telei´a" ajpallagh'").98 Between these shadows and the light there can be no middle ground. In death, as in life, the soul can stand only on either side of a “great chasm which none may cross” (Luke 16:26). There can thus be no purgatorial “third place” (tri´to" to´ po")99 because there can be no middling, intermediate relationship with God (cf. Matt. 12:30; Rev. 3:15–16). Neither is it possible, Eugenikos argued, for souls to suffer “physically” from any kind of “material or bodily fire,” 100 nor would such suffering somehow balance the ledger of divine debts. Eugenikos maintained that the Latin theory of satisfaction imposed human limits and logic on divine love and implied that God could forgive great sins but not small ones which must be punished. Citing the case of the “good thief ” transported to Paradise (Luke 23:43), and the Publican who “went to his house justified” (Luke 18:14), Eugenikos held that God’s love and forgiveness are absolute. Even the emperors themselves, he noted, do not punish wrongdoers after granting them amnesty. If sin is forgiven, punishment is not required since God’s justice and holiness do not “demand” punishment in order to be “satisfied.” 101 A “third place,” Eugenikos concluded, could be only an allegorical place, segmented from the real space and time (kairo´ ") of the final judgment,102 and as such represents only the didactic or proleptic production of “expectant,” prophetic space.103 Above all, there can be no purgatory because the full and final epiphany of deified humanity must await the resurrection of the transfigured body. The “kingdom is prepared, it has not yet been given (hJtoimasme´ nh ouj dedome´ nh); the fires, too, have been 97 Unlike the sainted souls hastening to the royal banquet, Eugenikos describes the souls of sinners as “bound within the confines of a prison, like persons who stand accused, and who await in anguish the arrival of the judge and the impending punishments”; Oratio altera, chap. 4 (p. 111, lines, 14–15). 98 Oratio altera, chap. 12 (p. 118, lines 30–31). 99 Oratio altera, chap. 23, no. 7 (p. 147, lines 13–15): mh` ejmfai´nesqai tri´ton tina` to´ pon, to` n ta` " tw'n me´ sw" biwsa´ ntwn yuca` " kaqarqhsome´ na" uJpodeco´ meno, cf. Oratio prima, chap. 5, p. 46, lines 13–18: tou` " krinome´ nou" eij" du´ o moi´ra" dielw´ n . . . oujdamou' kai` tri´tou" pare´ deixe, citing Matt. 25:46. Eugenikos did not misrepresent his tradition on this point, but cf. the Testament of Abraham, trans. E. P. Sanders in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. J. H. Charlesworth, vol. 1 (New York, 1983), 889–91, where a soul is “set in the middle” between the damned and the saved but later taken to paradise through the intercession of Abraham (cf. Gen 18:22, 33). For the plight of a similar soul, and its rescue by a local holy man in the 7th century, cf. F. Halkin, “La vision de Kaioumos et le sort ´eternel de Philentolos Olympiou,” AB 63 (1945): 56–64, and C. P. Kyrris, “The Admission of the Souls of Immoral but Humane People into the ‘Limbus Puerorum” according to the Cypriot Abbot Kaioumos,” RESEE 9 (1971): 461–77. 100 Oratio altera, chap. 11 (p. 118, lines 12–13): pu'r de` swmatiko` n ajswma´ tou" yuca` " kola´ zein te kai` kaqai´rein, ou“t∆ a‘n ei“pomen o”lw"… cf. ibid., chap. 23, no. 8 (pp. 148–49). 101 Oratio altera, chap. 19 (pp. 130–33), and chap. 23, no. 1 (pp. 140–41). 102 Oratio altera, chap. 5 (p. 112, lines 14–15) citing Matt. 8:29: “What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come to torment us before the time (pro` kairou')?” 103 Eugenikos, employing the technical terms of patristic exegesis, notes that the “visions and revelations” (ojptasi´ai kai` ajpokalu´ yei") that some saints beheld of souls in torment are “shadows and outlines of future events” (skiagrafi´ai tine` " tw'n mello´ ntwn kai` diatupw´ sei"), such as the vision of Daniel 7:9; cf. Oratio altera, chap. 10 (p. 117, lines 6–17). Such fire can only be allegorical (ajllhgorikw'") (ibid., chap. 11 [p. 118, line 16]), or “economic” (oijkonomikw'"), that is, uttered at a particular time for the spiritual edification of a particular audience (pro` " crei´an tina` tou' to´ te kairou' kai` tw'n ajkouo´ ntwn wjfe´ leian) (ibid., lines 16–18; cf. ibid., chap. 23, no. 10 [pp. 150–51]).

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prepared, but they are not yet occupied.” 104 The soul without the body is not the self nor can it be judged as such. The place where the body is absent cannot be identified with the self, and to suggest that souls can experience the fullness of heaven or hell before the resurrection is to suggest that the body adds little or nothing to human personhood and the experience of divinization.105 According to Eugenikos, “neither the soul by itself, nor the body by itself is deserving of the name human being, but only both together.” 106 And though body and soul constitute one single form, God can both divide them in death and unite them in the resurrection, just as God divided the single form of the primal light of creation to dwell in the body of the sun (citing Gen. 1:3–5, 14–19).107 Mark develops this analogy when he suggests that, “You are in awe at the beauty of the sun, and you admire the beautiful form of the body—imagine then the two of them coming together: the brightness of the sun and the symmetry and shape of the body by which all beauty is measured. And what would you wonder at more, a fixed, spherical form (sfairoeidh´ "), or the form of the human body with its parts beautifully fashioned and arranged? This is the sun which David called a ‘Bridegroom’ and a ‘Giant’” (Ps. 18:6).108 At the resurrection of the dead, the scattered fragments of body and soul will be gathered and united, and the corporeal plenitude of humanity will assemble for the dawning of a day without end. Then a river of fire will roar forth from the throne of Christ (cf. Dan. 7:9–10): “Unto the just it will appear as light, and unto sinners as a fire more searing than any physical pain, which is why David said, ‘The voice of the Lord divides the flame of fire’ (Ps. 28:7), and this division shall happen because those bodies upon which that fire shall alight are infernal and opaque, which distinguishes them from the bodies of the saints.” 109 The saints, on the other hand, will shine like “gold tried in the furnace (Wisd. 3:6),” 110 and the familiar functions of the body will be glorified and wondrously transfigured. 104 Oratio altera, chap. 5 (p. 112, lines 3–4), in the context of an exegesis of the judgment parable in Matt. 25:41. 105 See Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, 279–317. 106 Oratio altera, p. 55, lines 71–72. 107 Ibid., p. 55, lines 80–86; cf. Basil, Hexaemeron, 6 (cited below, note 109); cf. John Chrysostom, Hom. 25 in Jo.: “The old man was created on the sixth day, but the new one on the first, that is, on the same day as the light” (PG 59:150, lines 31–32). 108 Oratio altera, p. 58, lines 180–91. The entire psalm verse states: “In the sun he has set his tabernacle; and he comes forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber: he will exult as a giant to run his course.” Cf. Clement, Ekl. Proph. 56.4, 57.3 (the “tabernacle of the sun” ⫽ the “abode of the commanding angel,” or “God himself ”); and Gregory of Nazianzos, Or. 28.29 (SC 250 [Paris, 1978], 166–68, lines 16–22, 1–6). The “spherical form” is a slur on Origen; cf. H. Chadwick, “Origen, Celsus, and the Resurrection of the Body,” HTR 41 (1948): 83–102; A. M. Festugie`re, “Le corps glorieux ‘sphe´roı¨de’ chez Orige`ne,” Revue des sciences philoso¨r Katholische Theologie 82 phiques et the´ologiques 43 (1959): 81–86; J. Bauer, “Corpora Orbiculata,” Zeitschrift fu (1960): 333–41; and Patterson, Methodius, 178–79 (“The Spherical Body of the Resurrection”). 109 Oratio altera, p. 59, lines 223–28; cf. Basil, Hexaemeron, 6: “Do not tell me that it is impossible for these [i.e., light and the solar body] to be separated (cf. Gen. 1:3–5, 14–19) . . . this, too, the Psalmist testifies when he says, ‘The voice of the Lord divides the flame of fire’ (Ps. 28:7). Whence also in the requital for the actions of our lives a certain mysterious saying teaches us that the nature of fire will be divided, and the light will be assigned for the pleasure of the just, but also for the painful burning of those punished” (SC 26 [Paris, 1968], 336–38). 110 Oratio prima, chap. 5 (p. 46, line 29).

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Our eyes will see and we will understand both ourselves and the beauty of God. In place of all food, “I will be filled when I see your glory” (Ps. 16:15). The ears will receive the divine voice with joy, as it is said, “Make me to hear joy and gladness” (Ps. 50:10). We will taste with our lips that the “Lord is good” (Ps. 33:9), and we shall inhale the fragrance of the “Spiritual Myrrh” which “poured itself out for us” (cf. Phil. 4:18; Eph. 5:2). Though the tongue shall cease from its natural work, there will nonetheless resound the “song of those making festival and the sound of joy in the tents of the just” (Ps. 41:51; Ps. 117:15). And together with the curious disciple we shall touch the Word made flesh (cf. John 20:21; 1 John 1:1), and we shall know his wounds, and the reasons for his incarnation and passion. And the stomach, when it accepts the nourishment of the Word, shall give birth. For the body will become entirely spiritual, and its members will be spiritual and the foci of spiritual energies, and thus have its proper use.111

Until then, Eugenikos concluded, “‘Faith’ will rule over the present world, and ‘Hope’ over the period between death and resurrection, but ‘Love’ will reign after the final judgment, and through it the saints will be united to God.” 112 CONCLUSION Most religious traditions have maintained a keen interest in the ultimate destiny of the human person, and to this general rule Byzantine Christianity was no exception. With its attention to the relationship between body and soul, and with its concern for their fate after death and their longed-for reunion in the resurrection, Byzantine eschatology was primarily a transcendental fulfillment of anthropology. That is, the Byzantines believed that only in the clarifying light of the eschaton would the authentically and abidingly human appear in definitive relief and resolution. From this point of view, eschatology and anthropology are so closely interlaced that, in the words of one modern theologian, eschatology is anthropology conjugated in the future tense.113 However, and despite the obvious importance of these themes, the nature of the human and its fate after death were never authoritatively defined or formalized by an ecumenical council, nor were they ever the subjects per se of systematic theological inquiry. Thus throughout the Byzantine world one finds an assortment of eschatologies strewn somewhat carelessly about. Gershom Scholem’s remarks about a similar situation in rabbinic Judaism are worth quoting here: “Apart from basic ideas concerning reward and punishment, life after death, the Messiah, redemption, and resurrection, there is hardly a commonly held belief among the Jews regarding eschatological details. This lacuna provided an obvious opportunity for free play for the imaginative, the visionary, and the superstitious.” 114 111 On the Resurrection, 58–59, lines 197–211; cf. D. Chitty, The Letters of Saint Anthony the Great (Oxford, 1980), 3–5, and the commentary of Rubenson, The Letters of St. Anthony, 71: “The body is not simply to be discarded; it can be transformed. In [Letter 1, Antony] describes how each member of the body can be purified . . . the eyes, the ears, the tongue, the hands, the belly, the sexual organs and the feet, all can become pure through the work of the mind guided by the Spirit.” 112 Responsio, chap. 7 (p. 163, lines 22–39), alluding to 2 Cor. 5:7. 113 K. Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. W. V. Dych (New York, 1978), 431. Rahner is not of course addressing Byzantine theological sources, but see J. Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought (Crestwood, N.Y., 1975), 211, who notes that Rahner’s anthropology is “precisely in the line of Greek patristic tradition.” 114 G. Scholem, Kabbalah (Jerusalem, 1974), 333.

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Much the same could be said about the Byzantines, whose central confession of faith, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, professed only the return of Christ to “judge the living and the dead” and “expected the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come.” Emboldened by this inviting lacuna, the Byzantine horror vacui responded with endless conjectures and speculations.115 As noted above, these latter were selectively indebted to traditions and sources hallowed either by their antiquity, the prestige of their presumptive authors, or by their inclusion in an authoritative canon. But even longestablished and reasonably unambiguous positions, as well as canonical texts of unimpeachable authority, were themselves subject to an ongoing hermeneutical process of reception that over time rendered them susceptible to different readings and rival interpretations. As we have seen, the formation of Byzantine views about the afterlife was also influenced by theological corollaries implicit in liturgical practices such as the worship of the resurrected Christ, prayers and memorials for the dead, and devotion to the cult of saints and relics. Through prayer and contemplation, the various symbols of the earthly liturgy could be recognized and appropriated by thoughtful Byzantines as the exteriorized forms of the same liturgy celebrated invisibly in heaven and upon the altar of the human heart.116 In virtue of these iconic and macrocosmic transparencies, Byzantine eschatology exhibits profound links to the life of liturgy and prayer, and was perhaps easier for the mystic to experience than for the theologian to define. In the endless adventure of consciousness, postmortem encounters with demons and angels were but an extension of similar encounters experienced through the life of prayer in corpore. To descend through prayer into the crucible of the self was to risk an encounter with the demonic, the angelic, and the purifying fire of the divine. Such encounters were unavoidable at the hour of death, at which time the interior landscape of the soul was inexorably externalized and revisited as an ascent of self-discovery through the heavens. It may therefore not be wide of the mark to suggest that Byzantine eschatology is a view of the self and of ultimate things rooted in particular practices, traditions, and experiences of prayer. In this paper I have argued for the rich diversity of Byzantine eschatology (understood as “anthropology in the future tense”), but it would be a mistake to fail to discern larger interlocking patterns within the overall carpet. Let me suggest tentatively, then, and at a fairly high level of abstraction, the presence of two schools of thought reflecting the complex double consciousness of the Byzantines with respect to their Greek and Jewish heritage. Following Jan Bremmer, we may provisionally distinguish between beliefs in a “free soul” and beliefs in a “body soul,” each differing in terms of their eschatological conjugations and corollaries. According to Bremmer, the “free soul” is a kind of active double of the human being, functionally independent of the body, and which represents the individual personality. The “body soul,” on the other hand, is the animating principle of biological life, motion, and growth, often associated with the blood and 115 See Gregory of Nazianzos, Oration 27.10, who encouraged Christian thinkers to “Philosophize about . . . resurrection, about judgment, about reward . . . for in these subjects to hit the mark is not useless, and to miss it is not dangerous”; ed. P. Gallay, SC 250 (Paris, 1978), 96. 116 For a thoughtful statement of this phenomenon, see A. Golitzin, “Liturgy and Mysticism: The Experience of God in Eastern Orthodox Christianity,” Pro Ecclesia 8 (1999): 159–86, and the same author’s contribution to this volume.

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with various bodily organs and faculties. The “free soul” alone survived the death of the body as the active soul of the dead. Bremmer argues that the later identification of these “two souls” constitutes the modern concept of the soul, an identification advanced by Christian views of the human person as irreducibly embodied.117 While it is true that eschatologically reductive beliefs in a “body soul,” including the “sleep” or “death” of that soul, generally emerged within rationalist critiques of the cult of the saints, they could also claim to be a legitimate expression of the Christian tradition. At birth, a person entered the world with only body and soul, but upon baptism received the Holy Spirit as an aspect of his or her personhood and individuality. At death, the Holy Spirit returned to its source in God, while the soul (i.e., the “body soul” or “animal spirit” linked to the blood) entered a period of sleep until the day of resurrection, at which time it would be reunited with the Holy Spirit and come to new life.118 When these two rival traditions were brought together, they produced still further disjunctions, such as the notion of “two souls,” a duality within the self experienced as a simultaneous condition of bondage and release. The precarious interior condition of the divided self was dramatically exteriorized in the narratives of angels and demons struggling at the celestial tollgates, paralleling the systematic interrogations of the monastic confessional as well as the divided inclination of divine mercy and justice.119 It may also have been the case that the Byzantines’ experience of the splintering hierarchies of church and state encouraged the formation of complex and taxing metaphysical systems. At the level of narrative and rhetoric, these systems, as noted above, drew on the traditions of trial and tribulation between life and afterlife available from many strata of Greek culture, as though the one dying were a mythical hero negotiating the gates of Hades. In a monastic environment, the forgiveness or damnation of a member of the community was of the greatest importance, as the practices and exercises undertaken by that community could thereby be assessed as effective or ineffective. At the moment of death, the ascetic perceived the horror behind the possibility that even after a lifetime of struggle and the pursuit of purity, rescue was not assured. The death of the individual becomes a corporate moment as each member must reevaluate the standard to which he holds.120 Bremmer, Concept of Soul, 14–53 (as above, note 2), For a discussion of this question, see the studies by Kru ¨ ger cited in note 69, and Origen, Commentary on Matthew, 57.62: “‘He will divide them in two’ (cf. Matt. 24:50), for they who have sinned are divided: one part of them is put ‘with the unfaithful’ (cf. Luke 12:46), but the part which is not from themselves ‘returns to God who gave it’ (Eccl. 12:7). . . . God will divide them in two when ‘the spirit returns to God who gave it,’ but the soul goes with its body to hell. The righteous, however, are not divided. Instead, their soul goes with their body to the heavenly kingdom”; ed. E. Klostermann and E. Benz, GCS 11 (Leipzig, 1933), p. 144. See also the epigram by Manuel Philes, “On the Resurrection,” which describes souls prior to the resurrection as “hitherto confined in their coffins, and which dwelled beside their bodies, now being freed from the shadows and the gloom, and from the stench of death therein”; cited in N. Constas, “Gregory the Theologian and a Byzantine Epigram on the Resurrection by Manuel Philes,” in Rightly Teaching the Word of Truth, ed. N. Vaporis (Brookline, Mass., 1995), 255–56. 119 On which see J. Carmen, Majesty and Meekness: A Comparative Study of Contrast and Harmony in the Concept of God (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1994). Note the parallel to rabbinic traditions, in which Satan is not simply a figure of complete evil, but represents the principle of justice that brings balance to the principle of mercy; cf. P. Scha¨fer, Rivalita¨t zwischen Engeln und Menschen: Untersuchungen zur rabbinischen Engelvorstellung (Berlin, 1975), 187, 222. 120 See, for example, the intense interest of a monastic community in the death of one of its members described by John Climacus, Ladder of Divine Ascent, 5 (“The Prison”) (PG 88:772C–73A; trans. Luibheid, 126). 117 118

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Another pattern that emerged within the course of this study is what Jaroslav Pelikan has described as a critical shift from Christian idealism to Christian materialism. By the end of the late antique period, Pelikan observes the appearance of a “new Christian metaphysics and aesthetics [and a] new Christian epistemology,” adding that “by the time of the Iconoclastic controversy, the ‘Christian idealism’ that was so prominent, especially in the thought of many of the Alexandrian church fathers such as Clement and Origen, had been counterbalanced by a ‘Christian materialism.’” To this general observation, Henry Maguire has added a further nuance, noting that Iconoclasm had a withering effect on what he calls the “magical” aspects of icons. After Iconoclasm, Maguire argues, it could no longer be the material image that was itself the efficacious source of power, but rather the hypostatic presence and personal involvement and activity of the depicted saint. The posticonoclastic reconceptualization of the icon therefore placed even greater burdens on the souls of the departed saints: deprived of their magical and material props, their own souls were left to do all the work.121 The theology of the icon, of course, was part of the larger Byzantine worldview, embracing implicit and explicit concepts of human nature, the locus of the self, and the fate of the soul after death. As noted above, Byzantine theologians resisted the reduction of the human person to a mere mental entity, and endeavored to work out a conception of the self as fundamentally embodied. Inasmuch as these efforts unfolded against the backcloth of the cult of saints and relics, human identity seemed necessarily to presuppose a strong degree of spatiotemporal continuity, insuring that the individual saint continued to be the same person over time, across space, and beyond death. As a result, the mortal remains of the saints were identified with their glorious eschatological bodies. Conversely, the increasing sense of the self as irreducibly embodied added considerable weight to the experiences and moral choices of that body in what was described above as a “corporeal subjectivity,” a form of postmortem consciousness understood as a reenactment of the body’s experience.122 The notion of “corporeal subjectivity” brings us in turn to yet another common thread that has run through a great many of the writers and traditions considered in this study, namely, the metaphor of death as a state of sleep and dreaming, in which the faculty of memory—a major modality of Byzantine culture—plays a pivotal role. The apparent independence of human consciousness during sleep provided the Byzantines with a helpful and universally shared experience that served as a framework for conjectures about the afterlife. In other words, the Byzantine religious imagination made use of the experience of sleep and dreams in order to organize more abstract thinking by projecting patterns from one domain of experience into another. During sleep, the body is inactive while the soul actively retains consciousness, thoughts, memories, and the capacity to have emotions. In this way, the environment of the other world was frequently held to be a kind of dream world, with mental imagery playing in the next world the role that sense perception plays in this one. “Dreams,” in the words of G. K. Chesterton, “are 121 J. Pelikan, Imago Dei: The Byzantine Apologia for Icons (Princeton, N.J., 1990), 99, 107; H. Maguire, The Icons of Their Bodies (Princeton, N.J., 1996), 138–39. 122 ¨hen Christentum bis zur On which see A. Angenendt, Heilige und Reliquien. Die Geschichte ihres Kultes vom fru Gegenwart (Munich, 1994), esp. 102–22 (⫽ “Das Doppelexistenz: Im Himmel und auf Erden”); C. Bynum, “Why All the Fuss about the Body? A Medievalist’s Perspective,” Critical Inquiry 22 (1995): 1–33.

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like life, only more so.” 123 Indeed, the afterlife promised (or threatened) to be every bit as detailed and vivid as this one, and include a body-image as in dreams in this life. The world beyond the grave is a psychological and spiritual, rather than a physical, world. The postmortem survival (and continuity) of memory and consciousness was also necessary for the punishment of the sinful, the recompense of the righteous, and, as has been noted, as a corollary to the cult of saints. Memory thus becomes the crucial and necessary means to achieve peace with the past and hope for the future. It is intriguing to note that modern science has begun to understand some of the connections between sleep, dreams, and memory. During sleep, the mind organizes and encodes the experiences of the day, a remarkable analogy to the Byzantine belief that the sleep of death is a “time” largely given over to the processes of memory and the ruminations of consciousness. I conclude by returning to the question of Byzantine eschatology as a view of the self and of ultimate things rooted in the experiences of prayer and spirituality. Byzantine apocalyptic and eschatology was not the type that was expected to break into the world violently from without. The exteriorized apocalyptic of John’s Revelation was sealed within the only book of the Bible that was never publicly read in the Byzantine church. Instead, the Kingdom of God was a reality that promised to break through, not from a point outside the cosmos, but from within the depths of the self. It is thus no coincidence that patristic and Byzantine speculation regarding the fate of the soul after death emerged from within the narrow, tomblike confines of the monastic cell, conjured up by a class of black-garbed mourners (“blessed living corpses,” according to the Ladder of Divine Ascent 4) who saw themselves as having “died to the world,” and for whom the memory of death was the point of entry into life. At the very center of the Life of Antony, the founder of eastern monasticism teaches that: “It is good to consider the word of the Apostle: “I die every day” (1 Cor. 15:31), for if we too live as though dying daily, we shall not sin. And the meaning of the saying is this: as we rise day by day we should think that we shall not abide till evening; and again, when we are about to lie down to sleep, we should think that we shall not rise up. For our life is naturally uncertain, and a gift allotted to us daily” (§19). So much for the center. Among Antony’s last words at the conclusion of the Life are these: “Breathe Christ . . . and live as though dying daily” (§91; cf. §89). The Byzantine paradox of death in life, noted at the outset of this study, seems to have been an important aspect, not only of Antony’s theology of death, but of his vision of the monastic life, that is, of his mode of being in the world. From this perspective, the symbolic vocabulary of Byzantine eschatology, both in its heavenly and infernal dimensions, merges effortlessly with the symbolic vocabulary of the Byzantine ascetical and mystical life. The experience of darkness and isolation, the struggle with thoughts and memories that arise in the course of solitary confinement, the pain of sin and the pangs of conscience as a foretaste of impending damnation,124 confrontations with the demonic, the desire to live an “angelic life,” the experience of ecstasy and of ecstatic transport, either in corpore or in Cited in G. Stroumsa, “Dreams and Visions in Early Christian Discourse,” in Dream Cultures: Explorations in the Comparative History of Dreaming, ed. D. Shulman and G. Stroumsa (Oxford, 1999), 191. 124 On which see Symeon the New Theologian, On Penitence and the Fear of God (CWS, 254; cf. 330). 123

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spiritu “I know not” (cf. 2 Cor. 12:2), the notion of repentance and conversion as an interiorized resurrection from the dead,125 and the encounter with God as a purifying light, are at once the basic features of Byzantine spirituality and the basic features of the soul’s final journey to the home of another. In Byzantium, the afterlife was in many ways the inner life turned inside out and writ large upon the cosmos. The contours and dimensions of the inner world shaped the landscape of the outer world, producing an alternative world through the subjective transformation of the self. The Byzantines had no “system” around the last things. Eschatology remained for them an open horizon within theology, an openness perhaps intended to draw experience and thought toward that which lies beyond the bounds of the world of space and time. Perhaps the very inaccessibility of the last things rendered them all the more actual and compelling; a ferment in the present order. It was not the last things that were expected to be carried over into the cosmos, but the cosmos that was called, in and through the microcosm, to be carried beyond itself, out of itself, into the mystery of God, who alone is the first thing and the last thing. Harvard University 125

Symeon the New Theologian, The Example of Symeon the Pious (CWS, 128–29; cf. 181, 296).

This is an extract from:

Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No. 55 Editor: Alice-Mary Talbot Published by

Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection Washington, D.C. Issue year 2001 © 2002 Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University Washington, D.C. Printed in the United States of America

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“Earthly Angels and Heavenly Men”: The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Niketas Stethatos, and the Tradition of “Interiorized Apocalyptic” in Eastern Christian Ascetical and Mystical Literature ALEXANDER GOLITZIN

y interests lie in the first half millennium of the eastern Christian world and are focused on a relatively narrow band: the asceticomystical literature of the Christian East and early monasticism and on the roots of that literature in the New Testament matrix of Second Temple Judaism. This is five to twelve hundred years—together with vast cultural and demographic shifts—away from the central figure in this essay, Niketas Stethatos. In spite of this apparent—and real—anachronism, it is precisely the echoes of an ancient literature from earliest Christian and pre-Christian Jewish antiquity, together with the important modifications that literature underwent at the hands of fourth- and fifth-century monastic writers, that struck me when I recalled what I had read previously in and about Niketas. This then directed me back to his writings in order to discover yet more echoes—and those in great abundance—of the ancient currents and motifs that preoccupy me. So I offer this essay as a sort of preliminary notice of elements and trends that lend further substance to frequent observations about the religious life of medieval Byzantium, and that point in other directions where further inquiry may prove fruitful, or at least diverting. In what follows, I first note the question of the survival of Old Testament pseudepigraphic writings in Christianity and provide a glimpse of the revolution under way over the past twenty years in the study of apocalyptic literature; then illustrate the presence of apocalyptic motifs in Niketas’ writings, albeit in “interiorized form”; and conclude with a sketch of the fourth- and fifth-century ascetic writers whom I believe provided Niketas with the means for his appropriation of the ancient themes. Niketas Stethatos was born sometime in the opening decade of the second Christian millennium and died, an old man, toward the eleventh century’s end. He was a learned monk, perhaps best known as that disciple of St. Symeon the New Theologian (d. 1022) who wrote the latter’s vita and edited his works.1 Niketas was also an author in his own

M

Niketas’ life is briefly covered in both I. Hausherr’s edition of Niketas’ vita of Symeon the New Theologian, Un grand mystique byzantin: Vie de Syme´on le nouveau the´ologien, OrChr 12 (Rome, 1928), xv–xxxvii, and in J. Darrouze`s’ introduction, to his edition of Niketas’ works, Nice´tas Ste´thatos: Opuscules et lettres, SC 81 (Paris, 1961), 7–24. 1

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right. His treatises On the Soul, On Paradise, and On Hierarchy, together with a number of letters and shorter works, were edited forty years ago by Jean Darrouze`s for the series Sources chre´tiennes,2 while his three hundred chapters on ascetical and mystical topics found their way into Nikodemos Hagiorites’ eighteenth-century compendium the Philokalia, as well as into J.-P. Migne’s Patrologia graeca.3 He wrote controversial works as well and indeed at one point in his career confronted—not very successfully—the irascible papal legate Humbert of Silva Candida. That he was, though, permitted access to so august a personage, and appears to have ended his days as the abbot of the great monastery of Stoudios, may be taken as evidence that he was a man of the highest ecclesiastical culture and status.4 What was the apparently unlikely relationship between this prominent medieval churchman and certain texts written eight to twelve hundred years before his birth, texts that, with only a few notable exceptions, were not included in the canon of either the Old or New Testaments (even though all or most of them appear under the names of saints from Israel’s ancient or mythic past)? OLD TESTAMENT PSEUDEPIGRAPHA, CHRISTIAN TRANSMISSION, AND THE DEFINITION OF APOCALYPTIC At the end of her book Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses, Martha Himmelfarb poses my question in somewhat broader terms: “In monasteries East and West, OT Pseudepigrapha continued to be copied into the Middle Ages and beyond. Just how these texts were understood, and how their transmission could be squared with the existence of a well-defined canon is a subject worthy of attention.” 5 R. A. Kraft has noted that “from the tenth century onward there is a growing flood of Jewish pseudepigraphic materials in Greek, especially those which deal with the lives and deaths of ancient righteous persons.” 6 He also voices a “hunch” that these documents were “preserved in Greek” before the tenth century by “monastics whose concerns for personal piety . . . led them to ignore prohibitions of such material.” For those contemporary scholars anxious to ferret out strains of pre-rabbinic Judaism in these materials, Kraft also voices a caution which, I think, points directly toward our subject. How, he wonders, “in a Christian context that is conscious of its Jewish roots and thrives on visions and revelations . . . can one tell” where the ancient Jew leaves off and the later Christian begins?7 Monasteries, visions, revelations, and the tenth-century “flood” that Kraft notes all Darrouze`s’ Nice´tas Ste´thatos includes the following works: On the Soul, pp. 56–153; Contemplation of Paradise, 154–227; Letters (8) Appended to the Treatise on Paradise, 228–91; On Hierarchy, 292–365; On the Limits of Life, 366–411; Against the Jews, 412–43; On the Profession of Faith, 444–63; On the Canons, 464–85; On Stoudite Customs, 486–507; and New Heavens and New Earth, 508–15. My references to Niketas’ works cite this edition, e.g., SC, p. 216. 3 Nikh'ta monacou' kai` presbute´ rou⭈ Prw´ th praktikw'n kefalai´wn eJkatonta´ ", Deute´ ra fusikw'n kefalai´wn eJkatonta´ ", Tri´th gnwstikw'n kefalai´wn eJkatonta´ " (henceforth C 1–3), in Nikodemos Hagiorites, Filokali´a tw'n iJerw'n nhptikw'n, 5 vols. (repr. Athens, 1961), 3:273–355; PG 120:852–1010; The Philokalia: The Complete Text, trans. G. E. H. Palmer, P. Sherrard, and K. T. Ware, 4 vols. (London, 1979–1995), 4:79–174 (hereafter Ware et al.). My Greek citations of C refer to Nikodemos’ text. 4 The addressees of his several epistles alone suggest this; cf. Darrouze`s, Nice´tas Ste´thatos, 18–24. 5 M. Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (Oxford-New York, 1993), 99. 6 R. A. Kraft, “The Pseudepigrapha in Christianity,” in Tracing the Threads: Studies in the Vitality of the Jewish Pseudepigrapha, ed. J. C. Reeves, (Atlanta, 1994), 55–86, here 68. 7 Ibid., 70. 2

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play into the matter of Niketas’ works. Before I turn to him, however, I would like to make two qualifications, the first bearing on the matter of a “well-defined canon,” in Himmelfarb’s phrase, and the second regarding the type of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha of most interest to me. The scriptural canon, particularly of the Old Testament, was slow to achieve a fixed form in the East, at least in all its details.8 Athanasios of Alexandria’s festal epistle of 367 did provide a list that corresponds to the Old Testament of the Hebrew canon,9 but the absence of the so-called deuterocanonical books and their persistence, for example, in the present-day canon of the Greek and Russian churches (with some interesting minor differences) indicate that the canon was not fixed by the end of the fourth century.10 Further, at least two of the books to which Athanasios alludes in his epistle as apocryphal and even heretical, probably 1 Enoch (and perhaps 2 Enoch as well) and the Ascension of Isaiah, continued to be read in Egypt even as he was writing and, in fact, found their way into the very ample canon of Alexandria’s daughter church in Ethiopia.11 Centuries later in Russia, to the best of my knowledge, there was no “Old Testament,” that is, no complete collection of the Old Testament books between two covers, until the publication at the end of the 1490s of the Bible (translated, interestingly enough, from the Vulgate!) sponsored by Archbishop Gennady of Novgorod.12 The Russians seem to have made do until that time with the Palaia, the Old Testament texts appointed for reading at the church’s feasts. The latter collections often included apocryphal or pseudepigraphical materials now preserved soley in Old Church Slavonic, such as, for example, 2 Enoch, the Apocalypse of Abraham, the Ladder of Jacob, together with texts shared with other languages (though not always with Greek), for example, the second half of the Ascension of Isaiah.13 The Quinisext Council, canon 2, may, with its scattershot approval of a number of differ8 The best and practically the only short discussion I know of concerning the canon of scripture in the Orthodox Church is that of M. Prokurat, “Orthodox Interpretation of Scripture,” in The Bible in the Churches, ed. K. Hagen (Milwaukee, 1994), 59–99, esp. 65–93. 9 For a translation of Athanasios’ Paschal Epistle of 367, which includes important remarks on the Pseudepigrapha preserved only in the Coptic, see D. Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Oxford, 1995), 326–32 (Coptic addition, 330–32). On the similar reactions of other, contemporary bishops to the pseudepigrapha, see E. Earle Ellis, “The Old Testament Canon in the Early Church,” in MIKRA: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. M. J. Mulder and H. Sysling (Philadelphia, 1988), 653–90, esp. 665–70. 10 See Prokurat, “Orthodox Interpretation,” 70–74. 11 See E. Isaac’s introduction to his translation of 1 Enoch, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. J. H. Charlesworth, 2 vols. (New York, 1983, 1985), 1:5–10 (hereafter Charlesworth), as well as Charlesworth’s “Introduction for the General Reader,” 1:xxiii–xxiv. On the reading of the Ascension of Isaiah in late 4thcentury Egypt, see Abba Ammonas in note 47 below. 12 See Prokurat, “Orthodox Interpretation,” 80–93 on the Slavic Bible, esp. 83 on the Palaia: “a ‘Reader’s Digest’ version of the ‘historical books’ dressed up with apocryphal legends”—i.e., the Pseudepigrapha— which “completed the list” of the available Old Testament, together with the Psalter, the prophets, and certain of the Wisdom books. See also E. Turdeaunu, “La Palea byzantine chez les Slaves du sud et les Roumains,” RES 40 (1964): 195–206, repr. in idem, Apocryphes slaves et roumains de l’Ancien Testament (Leiden, 1981), 392–403. 13 I do not know of any one scholarly work in a West European language that focuses on the Slavic pseudepigrapha as a group, save E. Turdeaunu’s essays in Apocryphes slaves et roumains. For something more readily to hand and quickly synoptic, see the introductions and (the now somewhat dated) bibliographies prefacing each of these works in Charlesworth, 1:91–100 (2 Enoch); 681–88 (Apocalypse of Abraham); 2:143–55 (Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah); and 401–6 (Ladder of Jacob).

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ent ancient lists, have set the bounds firmly for the imperial church in 695, but things seem to have been rather more fluid in the wider “Byzantine commonwealth.” There is, second, the very broad category of the Pseudepigrapha themselves. Here the reasons for preservation and transmission would surely have varied according to the nature of the particular work. It is not difficult, for example, to imagine why books like the story of Joseph and Aseneth, or The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, remain well attested in the East into the late Middle Ages and beyond.14 The first is a moving tale of love and conversion, a kind of religious romance, while morality is the very stock-in-trade of the Testaments. Few if any ancient texts insist more strongly on “family values” than these moralizing sermons placed in the mouths of the sons of Jacob. The works that concern me, however, do not belong to the categories of either romance or homely preaching; they are instead examples of the genre called “apocalypse.” Here again I am obliged to introduce a few qualifications. The generally received sense of the terms apocalypse or apocalyptic immediately evokes images of cosmic catastrophe or perhaps of bad Hollywood movies. With some allowances for academic precision, the focus of biblical scholarship had, until rather recently, been quite similar. Earlier students of apocalyptic literature, whether of the canonical books of Daniel and Revelation, the vast number of similar works written from about 200 B.C. to A.D. 200, or indeed later Christian works from the end of the fourth century on, have concentrated on the eschatological aspects of these texts. These aspects include their view of history (deterministic, the inexorable advance of the divine plan), ex eventu prophecy placed in the mouths of figures set deeply—in the case of the earlier works—in Israel’s past, the signs of the endtimes, and the cosmic struggle and last battle between good and evil, light and darkness, God and the devil. Investigations have usually been accompanied by smug remarks about the decline of prophetic inwardness in Spa¨tjudentum, together with speculation regarding the sociology and psychology represented by the apocalyptic writers whose texts are thus read as expressions of oppressed Jews or Christians under Greek or Roman rule, or of Jewish or Christian sects struggling within an indifferent or hostile majority, and so on.15 While there are certainly insights to be gleaned from this earlier approach, a definition of apocalypse or apocalyptic that focuses exclusively on the characteristics just listed will fail to account for many texts that everyone agrees must be included within the genre. This applies first of all to the grandfather of them all, the “Book of the Watchers,” that is, the first thirty-six chapters of 1 or Ethiopic Enoch, whose composition is at present thought to go back to at least 200 B.C. This text betrays little or no preoccupation with the signs of the end, no ex eventu prophecy, only a discrete impression of historical deter14 See the discussion of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and of Joseph and Aseneth by, respectively, H. C. Kee and C. Burchard, in Charlesworth, 1:775–80 and 2:177–201. 15 For examples of this earlier approach to apocalyptic literature, see J. Bright, A History of Israel: Third Edition (Philadelphia, 1981), 428–57; G. von Rad, Theology of the Old Testament, trans. D. M. G. Stalker (New York, 1965), 2:300–315; idem, Wisdom in Israel, trans. J. D. Martin (New York, 1972), 263–83; and D. S. Russell, The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic (Philadelphia, 1964), esp. 73–103. More recently, however, see R. A. Horsely and J. S. Hanson, Bandits, Prophets and Messiahs: Popular Movements at the Time of Christ (San Francisco, 1985), 135–89 on the continuation of prophecy into New Testament times, and S. L. Cook, Prophecy and Apocalypticism: The Post-Exilic Social Setting (Minneapolis, 1995), esp. 19–84, proposing that the primary matrix of later apocalyptic literature and thought was the Temple establishment of post-Exilic Palestine.

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minism, and not very much sense of the cosmic struggle (other than a set of naughty angels who give the book its name) that would show up with such force a few generations later in Daniel.16 The same generally holds true for the two apocalypses I mentioned above, the Jewish 2 Enoch and the Christian Ascension of Isaiah, and there are many others of similar nature.17 What these three works are primarily interested in is the ascent itself to heaven, the vision of the divine throne, the hosts and ranks of angels, and the contours of that heavenly geography that include the mysteries of the present and future worlds, for example, the origins of creation, weather-making, and the movements of the heavenly bodies, together with the places and nature of postmortem rewards and punishments. I arrive thus at a definition of apocalyptic proposed by Christopher Rowland in his illuminating book The Open Heaven: “To speak of apocalyptic . . . is to concentrate on the direct revelation of heavenly mysteries,” together with his later observation that these texts assert, in effect, “that certain individuals have been given to understand the mysteries of God, man, and the universe.” 18 The twin emphases on “direct revelation” and “certain individuals” will appear prominently in Niketas. Somewhat more prosaic and circumspect, though still in the same vein, is the definition of apocalypse by John Collins in 1979: “Apocalypse is a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, in so far as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial, in so far as it envisages another, supernatural world.” 19 Again, while the “temporal” dimension will be quite absent in Niketas (as it is, in fact, largely missing in the three apocalypses cited above), together with much of any “narrative framework,” the other elements of Collins’ definition do appear. If both the definitions just given, especially Rowland’s, have a “mystical” ring to them, this is not accidental. One of the single most important contributors to this reevaluation of the apocalyptic was the great scholar of Jewish mysticism, Gershom Scholem. It was the latter’s thesis that a line of continuity ran back from the medieval Jewish creators of Cabbalism to the ancient apocalypticists, with the mediating element between these two sets of literature, separated as they were by more than a millennium and by the rise of rabbinic Judaism, being the curious body of hekalot literature whose antiquity Scholem 16 See Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven, 5–6; and, at greater length on 1 Enoch, M. Dean-Otting, Heavenly Journeys: A Study of the Motif in Hellenistic Jewish Literature (Frankfurt am Main, 1984), 39–58; and J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to the Jewish Matrix of Christianity (New York, 1984), 1–32 and 35–46. On the roots of the Enochic literature in the ancient Near East, see G. Widengren, The Ascension of the Apostle and the Heavenly Book (Uppsala, 1950), 7–37. On the relationship of this Enochic and related literature to Christian origins and asceticism, see R. Murray, “Jews, Hebrews and Christians: Some Needed Distinctions,” NT 24.4 (1982): 195–208; idem, “‘Disaffected Judaism’ and Early Christianity: Some Predisposing Factors,” in To See Ourselves as Others See Us (Chico, Calif., 1985), 263–81; M. Barker, quite radically, in The Great Angel: A Study of Israel’s Second God (Louisville, Ky., 1992), esp. 190–231; and, most recently, C. Fletcher-Louis, Luke–Acts: Angels, Christology, and Soteriology (Tu ¨ bingen, 1997), 72–107 and 137–215, esp. 145–56. 17 Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven, 3, distinguishes eight apocalypses of ascent written between 200 B.C. and A.D. 200. These include: “The Book of the Watchers” (⫽1 Enoch 1–36, esp. 14); “The Similitudes of Enoch” (⫽1 Enoch 37–71, esp. 71); 2 Enoch; The Ascension of Isaiah; The Testament of Levi (esp. chaps. 2–5 and 8); The Apocalypse of Zephanaiah; The Apocalypse of Abraham; and 3 Baruch. 18 C. Rowland, The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity (New York, 1982), 14 and 76. 19 J. Collins, “Towards the Morphology of a Genre,” Semeia 14 (1979): 9.

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successfully demonstrated.20 Hekalot is the plural of hekal, meaning “palace” or “temple,” and the palaces or temples that comprised the subject of these texts were the heavens or abodes of the angels and, in the seventh and highest heaven or palace, the chariot or merkavah throne of God’s Glory, the kevod YHWH (‰Â‰È „·Î), which had formed the object of the prophet Ezekiel’s visions in Ezekiel 1, 9–11, and 43. The hekalot texts are thus concerned with the aliyah bammerkavah, the ascent to the merkavah, and, thanks to Scholem, have been generally dated to the era of the Talmud’s composition, that is, roughly A.D. 200–600. For, while it is true that works such as the Lesser and Greater Hekalot, together with 3 or Hebrew Enoch, are all later, medieval compilations, the pericopae that comprise them are much earlier and, moreover, often display the same interest in heavenly ascent and disclosure as the earlier apocalypses of ascent.21 Indeed, they are apocalypses of ascent, and, as such and even though they are largely innocent of all of the eschatological emphases that had hitherto been thought to characterize apocalyptic texts, their consideration as apocalypses has forced reconsideration of the genre as a whole.22 At present, therefore, the revelatory emphasis of apocalyptic literature shares center stage with the eschatological, together with the genre’s affirmation that some, however few, have gone up to heaven, to the temple or palace on high, to receive the secrets of the celestial realm. The theme of the “heavenly temple” was recently underscored by, among others, the study of Martha Himmelfarb mentioned earlier. She begins by quoting 2 Enoch 9:17–19, in which the patriarch, after having been escorted to the heavenly throne, undergoes a transformation: “And the Lord said to Michael, ‘Take Enoch and take off his earthly garments and anoint him with good oil, and clothe him in glorious garments.’ And Michael took off from me my garments and anointed me with good oil. And the appearance of the oil was more resplendent than a great light, and its richness like sweet dew, and its fragrance like myrrh, shining like a ray of the sun. And I looked at myself, and I was G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Jerusalem, 1941; repr. 1973), esp. 40–79; idem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism and the Talmudic Tradition, 2d ed. (New York, 1965); and idem, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead: Basic Concepts in the Kabbalah, trans. J. Neugroschel (New York, 1991), esp. 15–55. 21 See, e.g., I. Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkabah Mysticism (Leiden, 1980); C. R. A. Morray-Jones, “Transformational Mysticism in the Apocalyptic-Merkabah Tradition,” JJS 43 (1992): 1–31; and, on this current among the Qumran sectaries, idem, “The Temple Within: The Embodied Divine Image and Its Worship in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Early Jewish and Christian Sources,” Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers 37.1 (1998): 400–431, together with J. Baumgarten, “The Qumran Sabbath Shirot and the Rabbinic Merkabah Tradition,” Revue de Qumran 13 (1988): 199–213. For an important analysis of the hekalot texts as varying medieval compilations of much earlier pericopae, however, see P. Scha¨fer, “Aufbau und redaktionelle Identita¨t der Hekhalot Zutarti,” JJS 33 (1982): 569–82, and for criticism of Scholem at greater length, D. Halperin, Faces in the Chariot: Early Jewish Responses to Ezekiel’s Vision (Tu ¨ bingen, 1988), esp. 1–114. For the critical texts of the hekalot literature, see P. Scha¨fer, Synopse zur Hekhalot Literatur (Tu ¨ bingen, 1981), as ¨ bersetzung der Hekhalot Literatur (Tu well as Scha¨fer’s four-volume set of translations into German, U ¨ bingen, 1987–95). In English, see P. Alexander’s translation of 3 Enoch in Charlesworth, 1:223–315, as well as M. S. Cohen, The Shi’ur Qomah: Texts and Recensions (Tu ¨ bingen, 1985). On kavod (glory) in the Old Testament, see M. Weinfeld, S.V., KBD in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, ed. G. J. Botterwick, H. Ringgren, and H.-J. Fabry, trans. D. E. Green (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1995), 7:22–38; and, in the Old and New Testaments, the older but still valuable article on do´ xa by G. Kittel, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. G. Kittel, trans. G.W. Bromily (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1964–1974), vol. 3, pp. 233–53; and see also P. Deseille, “Gloire de Dieu,” DSp 6:421–63, for a sketch (without reference to the Jewish background) of the word’s use in early and medieval Christian literature. 22 Thus the inclusion of A. J. Saladini’s article, “Apocalypses and ‘Apocalyptic’ in Rabbinic Literature and Mysticism,” in Semeia 14 (1979): 187–205. 20

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like one of the glorious ones, and there was no apparent difference.” 23 Enoch, in short, becomes an angel, and he does so through, as Himmelfarb remarks, a “heavenly version of priestly investiture.” She lists the elements in the ancient apocalypses (for example, the Ascension of Isaiah, Apocalypse of Abraham, Testament of Levi, Testament of Isaac, to which I would add the remarkable transformation scene in the rabbinic 3 Enoch, cited below), which are of importance for what I shall have to say about Niketas and his monastic predecessors. These elements are the ascent itself, transformation or transfiguration, the theme of light or splendor, isangelic status, and, perhaps most important, that status as conferred through participation in the heavenly liturgy.24 Himmelfarb also points out another detail: the seer shares in the angels’ praise by learning their hymns and so taking his place in the celestial choirs, as in the Ascension of Isaiah 8:17: “And I was allowed to sing my praises with them, too, and also the angel who was accompanying me, and our praises were like theirs.” 25 SELECTED, REPRESENTATIVE TEXTS FROM NIKETAS All of these elements appear, some of them repeatedly, in the writings of our medieval churchman, Niketas. So, too, do the components of both Rowland’s and Collins’ definitions, notably the communication of heavenly mysteries both to and through the seer, and these mysteries as embracing the knowledge of God, the angels, creation, and the world to come. Even the “otherworldly mediator” shows up in Niketas, albeit in somewhat altered form. One element alone is missing: the narrative. For Niketas, who echoes in this respect at once his master the New Theologian and the fourth-century predecessors of both men, the apocalyptic ascent, transformation, and participation in the angelic liturgy has become an interior event. I shall return to these predecessors presently, but for now let me cite some representative passages from Niketas’ writings, a few out of a very great many. The first example requires some extended commentary, since its dense cluster of scriptural citation and allusion signals important elements in the traditions from which Niketas is drawing. The passage is Century 3.60 in the collection of three hundred: “To him who dwells in a cave high on a mighty rock will be given the bread of knowledge and the cup of wisdom unto intoxication, and thus will his water be worthy of trust [or: assured]. He shall see a king in glory and his eyes will look on a distant land. His soul will study wisdom and he will announce to all the eternal place, outside of whose bounds there is nothing.” 26 This appears at first glance to be a simple paraphrase of the following verses from the Septuagint version of Isaiah 33:14–17: “Who shall announce to us that [He is] fire 23 Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven, 3, citing the translation by A. Pennington, in The Apocryphal Old Testament, ed. H. F. D. Sparks (Oxford, 1984), 337–38. On the heavenly temple, see also, e.g., P. Prigent, Apocalypse et liturgie (Neuchatel-Paris, 1964), 7–13 and 46–68; J. Levenson, Sinai and Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible (San Francisco, 1985), 89–184, esp. 179–84; G. Vermes, “Introduction,” The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, 3d ed. (London, New York, 1990), 46–51; A. Acerbi, L’Ascensione di Isaia: Christologia e profetismo in Siria nei primi decenni del II secolo (Milan, 1989), 50–56; and J. Collins, “A Throne in the Heavens: Apotheosis in PreChristian Judaism,” in Death, Ecstasy, and Otherworldly Journeys, ed. J. Collins and M. Fishbane (Albany, N.Y., 1995), 43–58. 24 Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven, 9–46. 25 Ibid., 56, citing J. M. T. Barton’s translation in Sparks, Apocryphal OT, 801. 26 Filokali´a, 3:342; trans. Ware et al., 4:158 (trans. slightly altered).

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burning? Who shall announce to us the eternal place? Whoever walks in righteousness and speaks honestly, who hates lawlessness and iniquity and whose hands wave bribes away, who stops his ears from hearing of bloodshed and shuts his eyes so as not to look on iniquity. He shall dwell in a cave high on a mighty rock; bread shall be given him and his water [shall be] assured. You shall see a King with glory and your eyes will look on a distant land.” Niketas’ paraphrase nonetheless incorporates some significant changes. He eliminates the shift in the concluding verse from the third person singular to the second person plural. The opening verse of the scriptural passage, “Who shall announce,” now comes after the originally final verse, or, put another way, the annunciation of the “eternal place” becomes a consequence of the vision of the “King in glory.” We also find the addition of the phrases “[bread] of knowledge” and “cup of wisdom unto intoxication” to the “bread” and “water” of the prophet, and “His soul will study wisdom” to the concluding sentence. Overall, Niketas’ use of Isaiah 33:14–17 first of all incorporates other and for him related reminiscences from elsewhere in the scriptures and, second, is intended to combine them into a single portrait, that of the holy man or inspired elder. The first of several scriptural echoes in Niketas concern the “cave” (sph´ laion) and “rock” (pe´ tra) of the first sentence, which would have recalled for our author two of the great theophanies of the Old Testament: the experience of divine presence accorded Elijah in the cave (sph´ laion) on Mount Horeb in 1 Kings 19:9–18 and the visio gloriae awarded Moses, sheltered “in the cleft of the rock” (eij" ojph` n th'" pe´ tra") in Exodus 33:21– 23. In the case of the latter, we might also recall both the subsequent transformation of the lawgiver’s person in Exodus 34:29–35, his face still shining with the reflection of the divine kavod and veiled to avoid frightening the Israelites, and then the use to which St. Paul puts this episode, in 2 Corinthians 3:7–4:6, in order to underline the permanent and greater transfiguration afforded the Christian through Christ.27 Overall, then, the echoes here are all to do with the visio dei, especially the visio dei luminis, together with the attendant transfiguration of the seer. Perhaps it is also of some note that, at least in the contemporary Orthodox Church, these two Old Testament passages are both read at the vespers of the feast of the Transfiguration. In Niketas’ additions of the “[bread] of knowledge” and “cup [krath´ r] of wisdom,” we surely find an allusion to the cup, table, and bread that Wisdom offers in Proverbs 9:2–5. He may also have had in mind the eucharist, especially via John 6:33 and 51, the “living bread,” “bread from heaven,” etc., or “the cup of salvation” of Psalm 116:13, which features in the contemporary Orthodox Church’s precommunion prayers. The note of “intoxication” also recalls the phrase “sober intoxication” used by Philo and later church fathers for the encounter with God, that is, the higher levels of mystical experience. Then there is the phrase u”dwr pisto´ n. In its scriptural context, it appears to mean simply that the righteous will not need to worry about either food or drink in the eschatological city. In the perfected Jerusalem, one’s water will be “assured,” guaranteed. Niketas is using it, I think, for the preaching or teaching of the seer, or saint, who has seen God, thus partaken of Wisdom’s feast, and so is “worthy of trust.” I would therefore understand the phrase as linked in Niketas’ mind to two scriptural texts, the pisto` " lo´ go" of 1 Timothy On St. Paul’s use of Moses and Exod. 33–34 in 2 Cor. 3:3, see A. Segal, Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (New Haven, Conn., 1990), 58–61; and C. C. Newman, Paul’s Glory Christology: Tradition and Rhetoric (Leiden, 1992), 229–35. 27

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1:15 (cf. also Titus 1:9 and Rev. 21:5) and, perhaps as well, the “living water” that, as Christ promises in John 7:38–39, will stream from all who believe in him and that the evangelist then goes on to identify with the Holy Spirit. I might also point to the related image in Revelation 22:1, the “river of life” flowing from beneath the throne of God and the Lamb, as well as to the latter’s source in the vision of Ezekiel 47:1 ff, the river streaming from the eschatologically renewed temple to water the earth.28 The second sentence of Century 360, Isaiah 33:17, strikes the specific note of theophany: “He [“You” in Isaiah] shall see a king with glory and his [“your”] eyes a distant land.” Patristic writers from the second-century Epistle of Barnabas and Justin Martyr routinely apply this verse to the eschatological vision. Eusebios of Caesarea (d. 339), however, and Aphrahat the Persian (fl. 330s–340s) both—the former with great clarity—link it to the ascetic life, and Aphrahat, at least against the larger background of his work, suggests that the visio dei is not limited solely to the world to come but may also be anticipated in this life. Eusebios writes that the prophet wishes us: “to understand by these words the asceticism of the blessed ones, their way of life as the supreme philosophy. Thus he adds: ‘bread shall be given him and his bread is assured,’ for such a man, having exercised himself [ajskhqei´"] with bread and water in the present life, will enjoy [literally, “have”] the prize and fruit of asceticism which is the glorious vision of the King.” Aphrahat cites the text from Isaiah in tandem with an obvious allusion to the visio dei promised the “pure in heart” in Matthew 5:8, “Qui cor suum a dolo emundat, Regem in decore suo videbunt oculi eius.” 29 Aphrahat’s Syriac Bible, the Peshitta, renders the verse following the Hebrew, “Your eyes will see the King in his beauty,” while Eusebios’ (and Niketas’) Septuagint source changes “beauty” into “glory,” do´ xa.30 That the two terms, “beauty” and “glory,” were both taken as signifying the same splendor or radiance of divinity appears clearly, I think, in a second rather interesting feature of Eusebios’ and Aphrahat’s— and later Niketas’—use of this text. The three Christian writers, in particular Aphrahat See Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven, 17, on Ezek. 47:1 ff in apocalyptic generally, esp. the flowing river of fire from beneath the heavenly throne; also R. Brown, The Gospel of John, Anchor Bible 29, (New York, 1966), 1:320–24; and J. P. Swete, Revelation (Philadelphia, 1979), 307–11, for the prophet’s eschatological river in the Fourth Gospel and Apocalypse. On “sober drunkeness,” see H. Lewy, Sobra ebrietas: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der antiken Mystik, ZNW 9 (Giessen, 1929). 29 See Epistle of Barnabas 11 (PG 2:757B); Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 70 (PG 6:641A); also Hippolytos, De Antichristo, 44.9 (PG 10:761A–764A), in the 3rd century (and interesting for its linkage of Isa. 33:17 with Dan. 7:13); and in the later 4th and early 5th centuries, Apollinaris, Fragmenta in Psalmos, 67.3 (text in E. Mu ¨ hlenberg, ¨berlierferung, vol. 1 [Berlin: 1975], 26–27); Didymos the Blind, De Trinied., Psalmenkommentaren aus der Katenenu tate, 32 (PG 39:428), included in a string of scriptural praises of Christ which, most interestingly in light of the merkavah traditions’ link with Ezekiel, joins Isa. 33:17 immediately to Ezek. 3:12 (and see the discussion below and note 33 on the “eternal place”); Cyril of Alexandria, Comm. in Isaiam (PG 70:729D–32A); and Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Comm. in Isaiam (PG 91:388AB). The most important for my purposes, however, and discussed above, remain Eusebios, Commentarius in Isaiam, 2.5, ed. J. Ziegler, GCS (Berlin, 1975), 217:17–21; Aphrahat, Demonstration, 6.1, PS 1:252, lines 7–9: , and cf. also, for an echo elsewhere in Aphrahat of the apocalyptic ascent tradition, Dem. 14.35, 661:6–664:7; and for comment, J. Rausch, “The Monastic Concept of Purity of Heart and Its Sources,” Studia Monastica 11.2 (1969): 281–82, who rightly discerns a recollection here of 1 Enoch and parallels. See also M.-J. Pierre’s remarks, in Aphraate le sage persan: Les Expose´s, SC 349 (Paris, 1988), 947 n. 269. 30 The MT of Isa. 33:17 is ÍÈÈÚ ‰ÈÊÁ˙ ÂÈÙÈ· ÍÏÓ, where ÈÙÈ· (byaphyo), “in his beauty,” is rendered (bshuphreh, “in his beauty”) in the Peshitta, and meta` do´ xh" (“with glory”) in the Septuagint. On the latter’s use of do´ xa to cover a number of related, theophanic terms in the Hebrew, see Newman, Paul’s Glory Christology, 134–53. 28

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and Niketas, the first two from the early fourth century and the third from the eleventh, share a visionary use of Isaiah 33:17 with an important representative of Jewish mystical literature, the medieval compilation of older, amoraic (i.e., Talmudic-era) texts called Hekalot Zutarti, the Lesser Hekalot. Peter Scha¨fer’s Konkordanz zur Hekalot Literatur lists Isaiah 33:17 as occurring ten times in the space of six paragraphs in Hekalot Zutarti. The context is R. Ishmael’s discussion of the perilous passage through the sixth hekal to the seventh in order to see the Glory of God enthroned, “the King in His beauty.” 31 I have the impression that the phrase also occurs elsewhere in rabbinic literature, but this one repeated instance will suffice to raise an interesting question about Niketas’ sources. To be sure, given especially Eusebios, we do not need to postulate Stethatos’ direct dependence on Jewish sources for his use of Isaiah 33:17, but there is still an intriguing parallelism here. Eusebios and Aphrahat are rough contemporaries of the Amoraim, the sages of the Talmud, and thus contemporary as well with the rabbis who wrote the passages that would be assembled later in such compilations as Hekalot Zutarti, and there is apparently evidence that, again, both of these two fourth-century, Christian writers (especially Aphrahat) were somewhat familiar with Jewish traditions. Niketas, in turn, is the rough contemporary of the medieval Jewish assemblers of the merkavah texts and of nascent Cabbalism as well, and we know that there was an interest in mystical traditions in medieval Byzantine Jewry. Niketas may then have had some contact with the Judaism of his time and place in a way more or less analogous to the contacts Eusebios and Aphrahat had with the rabbis of, respectively, fourth-century Palestine and Mesopotamia.32 At the least, we have in these mystical streams the example of a certain parallel flow in the two great religious traditions, Christianity and Judaism, two branches of a current that finds its wellsprings in the apocalyptic literature of the Second Temple era. Both Eusebios and Aphrahat, on the one hand, and Niketas, on the other, suggest that there may also have been, at least on occasion, a kind of seepage, as it were, between the sister religions. They had common roots, after all, and a shared territory. Why should we then assume that there was never any percolation of ideas through that common earth? 31 P. Scha¨fer, Konkordanz zur Hekhalot Literatur (Tu ¨ bingen, 1986), 1:300, for “the king in his beauty”; and idem, Synopse, para. 407–12, pp. 172–74, for the passages from Hekalot Zutarti. For the German translation, ¨ bersetzung, 3:145–52. see idem, U 32 I know of no studies devoted to this question, but see A. Scharf, Byzantine Jewry: From Justinian to the Fourth Crusade (New York, 1971), 168–70, for at least the mention of Cabbalists in Byzantine territories at or around the time of Niketas and S. W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, vol. 3: Philosophy and Science (New York, 1958), 30–31, who indeed argues for medieval Jewish mysticism as stemming from Byzantine Jewry. On Syrian Christian use of Jewish traditions, see S. Brock, “Jewish Traditions in Syriac Sources,” JJS 30 (1979): 212–32; and particularly for Aphrahat’s acquaintance with Jewish thought, N. Koltun-Fromm, “A Jewish-Christian Conversation in Fourth-Century Iran,” JJS 47 (1996): 45–63. See also Niketas, Against the Jews, which displays a greater familiarity with Jewish thought, particularly in para. 10’s description of the Word incarnate in the “letters” (gra´ mmata) that comprise the Torah (SC, p. 424), than one might expect, together with a surprisingly sympathetic (other than the opening citation of Jer. 4:5–5:20) approach, e.g., the closing reference in para. 24 to Romans 11:26 (440–42) with its invocation of a unity within the “Israel of God” that demands the inclusion of both Christians and Jews. I cannot think of a more pleasingly eirenic recourse to Romans 9–11 in either patristic or later Byzantine literature. For Christian-Jewish relations in Byzantium, and perhaps for modern ecumenism as well, this little treatise of Niketas might repay closer attention than I can give it here.

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The final scriptural echoes that should be pointed out are those that I take to be associated for Niketas with the “eternal place,” aijw´ nio" to´ po", of Isaiah 33:14. These are, I think, both Exodus 24:10, “the place [to´ po"] where stood,” which the Septuagint inserts in front of the Hebrew, “the God of Israel,” in the sentence, “They saw [the place where stood] the God of Israel,” and the song of the cherubim in Ezekiel 3:12, “Blessed be the Glory of God from His place” (Hebrew maqom, ̘Ó; Greek to´ po").33 The “eternal place” is thus the dwelling of God and perhaps a stand-in for the reign or kingdom of God which Niketas’ seer is to “announce to all.” The divine to´ po" is also a term with a considerable history in eastern ascetical-mystical literature, especially prominent in Evagrios Pontikos.34 In any case, I hope this exercise has shown that Niketas’ Century 3.60 is not a simple paraphrase but is instead quite soaked with theophanic and eschatological allusions, including perhaps even a remarkable echo of the rabbinic merkavah lore. But all of this comes with a difference. While we are obviously here in the realm and vocabulary of apocalyptic visions—seeing the enthroned king, the eschatological river, the heavenly temple, perhaps an echo of the angelic liturgy in the “eternal place,” and (not least) the prophetic and inspired calling of the seer—it should also be clear from his subtle manipulations of the original scriptural verse that, for Niketas, it is the seer, the transfigured visionary, who is the subject of interest and whose role is being described. The human recipient is to become himself the spring of living water, and this because, at least by implication, the vision itself has taken place within him, such that it is he who becomes in fact the throne of divinity and locus of the Presence, at once the temple on high and— recalling my earlier discussion of Martha Himmelfarb on vision and transformation— the priest, with the angels, of the heavenly mysteries. I am emboldened to make these assertions because Niketas himself elsewhere in his writings makes every single one of them explicitly, repeatedly, and in detail. His entire treatise, Contemplation of Paradise, is devoted to the siting of the spiritual (nohto´ ") and eternal paradise of heaven within the sanctified soul. As he remarks at the conclusion of the treatise, it is there, within the soul, that one is to find the presence of the Holy Spirit and so the reality of the third heaven to which St. Paul says he ascended in 2 Corinthians 12:2–4. This interior and more spacious paradise, the “great world in the small,” is the “palace [pala´ tion—and recall hekal ] of Christ.” 35 Thus, too, the hallowed intellect is “the altar within us,” the “throne of God.” 36 The inner altar as “throne of God” suggests, furthermore, the 33 Of some note, perhaps, is the use in rabbinic literature of maqom, “place,” as itself a divine name whose resonances overlap with those of the Shekinah. See in this regard E. E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, trans. I. Abrahams (Jerusalem, 1975; repr. Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 37–79, esp. 66–79. 34 See my discussion of Evagrios on Exod. 24:10, below. 35 Contemplation of Paradise, 8.53 (SC, p. 216) for the “palace of Christ”; 2.19 (p. 176) for the “greater world” and inner “paradise,” and for “the great world in the small,” On the Soul 27 (p. 88). For similar evocations of the inner “paradise” and/or “palace,” see C 2.12 (Filokali´a, 3:301; trans. Ware et al., 4: p. 110); C 2.44 (308; p. 119); C 2.50 (310; p. 121); 3.23 (331; p. 146); 3.38–39 (335; pp. 149–50); On the Soul 11.60 (SC, p. 122); Contemplation of Paradise, 8.58 (p. 224); Ep. 6.2 (pp. 260–62); 6.9 (p. 270); and 6.10 (p. 272). 36 Ep. 6.8–10 (SC, pp. 268–72), on the “inner paradise” and “throne of the Trinity,” in the course of a discussion of 2 Cor. 12:2–4. For the divine throne: (1) as theological problem, not to be considered kat∆ ai“sqhsin, see Ep. 5.6–10 (pp. 252–58)—and note that the discussion begins with the issue of the supporting cherubim, thus recalling Ezek. 1 and the hekalot literature; (2) as the inner Presence, see C 2.42 (Filokali´a, 308; trans. Ware et al., p. 118); C 2.50 (310–11; p. 121), God descending upon the intellect “as upon a

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liturgy of heaven. In Century 3.16, to cite one example, Niketas spells this out: “So long as the nature of the powers within us is in a state of inner discord, we do not participate in God’s supernatural gifts. And if we do not participate in these gifts, we are also far from the mystical liturgy [lit., “priestly work,” iJerourgi´a] of the heavenly altar, celebrated by the intellect through its spiritual activity . . . [but, once the intellect has been purified through ascesis and prayer] we participate in the ineffable blessings of God, and worthily, together with God and God the Word, offer up the divine mysteries of the intellect’s spiritual [noero´ n] altar as initiates [ejpo´ ptai] and priests [iJerei'"] of His mysteries.” 37 The liturgy of the intellect, nou'", at the heavenly altar is no mere theory or metaphor. Niketas understands it as entailing a genuine experience, indeed as a transformation— ajlloi´wsi", change—and he holds, as in the apocalypses of ascent, that this transformation includes a share in the life of the angels. Thus the following from Century 2.43: “If while striving actively to practice the commandments, one should feel suddenly, with inexpressible and ineffable joy, that he is being transformed [ajlloiwqh'nai] with a strange and unaccountable change . . . then he should know that this is God’s sojourning [ejpidhmi´a] with him . . . [which] here and now bestows on him the state [or condition, kata´ stasi"] of the heavenly beings.” 38 The note of concelebration with the angels occurs often in Niketas’ works, but nowhere at greater length than in his treatise On Hierarchy, which is devoted more or less exclusively to this theme. At one point he supplies a particularly striking echo of the ancient apocalypses and, even more so, of the later merkavah literature: each triad of the angelic hierarchy and its corresponding triad in the human—or ecclesiastical—hierarchy has its own special hymn in heaven. The first angelic triad sings the cherubim’s praise from Ezekiel 3:12, “Blessed is the Glory of God from His place,” while the equivalent human triad is assigned the opening doxology of the divine liturgy, “Blessed is the Kingdom . . .” (an additional point, surely, linking the “eternal place” of Century 3.60 with the idea of the kingdom or reign of God). The second triad in each hierarchy is assigned the trisa´ gion of Isaiah 6:3, and in the third triad angels and people both sing the “Alleluia.” 39 throne”; C 3.49 (338; pp. 153–54); and C 2(3), relatedly, see C 3.26 (332; p. 146), for souls “like cherubim,” i.e., bearing the throne, and the virtues like “chariots” in C 3.95 (353; p. 171). For the soul as “altar” (qusiasth´ rion), “temple” (nao´ "), “sanctuary” (aJgiasth´ rion), “place” (to´ tto"), “dwelling place” (katoikhth´ rion), “house” (oi«ko"), “mountain [of God]” (o“ro"), and “tabernacle” (skhnh´ ), in short, the language of the temple and so, relatedly, of theophany and divine indwelling, see C 1.25 (,Filokali´a, 278; trans. Ware et al., p. 85); C 1.49 (284; p. 91); C 1.54 (285; p. 93); C 2.38 (307; p. 117); C 2.49 (310; p. 120); C 2.63 (314; p. 125); C 3.16 (330; p. 144); C 3.52 (339–40; p. 155), referring to Tabor; C 3.55 (340–41; p. 156), Zion and “house of God”; C 3.60 (342; p. 158); C 3.79 (348–49; p. 165); On the Soul, 9.51 (SC, p. 114); and Contemplation of Paradise, 2.20 (SC, p. 176). 37 C 3.16 (Filokali´a, 330; trans. Ware et al., p. 144, slightly altered). For other references to concelebration with or otherwise becoming like the angels, see just below, as well as: C 1.90 (295; p. 103); C 2.47 (309; p. 120); C 2.63 (314; p. 125); C 3.99 (354–55; pp. 172–73); Vie de Syme´on, chap. 33 (p. 44); ibid., 113 (p. 156) and 133–34 (pp. 192–97); On the Soul, 3.16 (SC, pp. 78–80); 10.54 (p. 116); 13.70–71 (pp. 132–34); 14.79–80 (pp. 144–46); 15.83 (p. 150); On Hierarchy, 1.2–4 (SC., pp. 302–4); 7.59 (pp. 356–58); On the Canons, 10 (p. 474); and On Studite Customs, 1 (pp. 486–88). The two latter citations both speak of the ties between the heavenly and earthly liturgies. 38 C 2.43 (Filokali´a, 308; trans. Ware et al., p. 118, slightly altered). 39 On Hierarchy, 3.22–23 (SC, pp. 326–28), and recall my remarks drawn above from Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven, 35–36 and 55–56. I cannot recall any instance in the ancient apocalypses where the several angelic

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To the objection that the human side of these hierarchies has, at the least, a very ecclesiastical ring, and that some bishops (or maybe most) do not really deserve to be singing with the angels either here or even especially in the world to come, Niketas offers a kind of escape clause which at the same time underlines the primacy he places on the inner life. Echoing Origen eight hundred years earlier, he explains in On Hierarchy that the “true bishop” is one whose “apostolic rank [ta´ gma ajpostoliko´ n] the Holy Spirit has made manifest in the Church” 40 and who is therefore, by virtue of that experience, both an initiate and communicator of heavenly mysteries, mu´ sth" and mustagwgo´ ".41 The “true bishop,” “initiate,” “mystagogue,” and “priest of the divine mysteries” has a number of other titles as well. These include mediator (mesi´th"), leader or abbot (hJgou´ meno"), lawgiver (nomoqe´ th"), guide (oJdhgo´ "), teacher (dida´ skalo"), physician (ijatro´ "), nazirite (nazirai'o"), prophet (profh´ th"), sage, friend of God, spiritual father “begetting other souls in Christ,” theologian, apostle, and finally “earthly angel” (ejpi´geio" a“ggelo"), and “heavenly man” (a“nqrwpo" oujra´ nio").42 This list, particularly the first and last titles, mediator and earthly angel/heavenly man, leads me to suggest that, for Niketas, the place hymns in the different heavens are quoted, but this does occur in the merkavah texts. Thus see, e.g., Ma’aseh Merkavah, 6, cited at length in Morray-Jones, “The Temple Within,” 416–17 (Hebrew in Scha¨fer, Synopse, 555, pp. 209–10): each of the angelic choirs in the seven heavens has its own hymn, starting with the trisa´ gion in the first heaven. On this text from Niketas’ On Hierarchy and its relation to both Symeon New Theologian and Dionysios Areopagites, including their common stress on the liturgies of heaven and earth as both “inner” and “outer” realities, see A. Golitzin, “Hierarchy vs. Anarchy? Dionysius Areopagites, Symeon New Theologian, Nicetas Stethatos, and Their Common Roots in Ascetical Traditon,” SVThQ 38.2 (1994): 131–79, here 142–52 ff. 40 On Hierarchy, 5.37–38 (SC, pp. 340–42). The recollection of Origen comes from In Mt, PG 13:161BC, cited by I. Hausherr, Spiritual Direction in the Early Christian East, trans. A. Gythiel (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1990), 22. 41 On Hierarchy, 5.39 (SC, p. 342). On the knowledge of “heavenly mysteries,” recall Rowland’s remarks above on this as a virtual definition of apocalyptic, and note the frequent use of this and like phrases— “hidden mysteries,” “unutterable mysteries” (surely a recollection of 2 Cor. 12:4 a“rjrJhta rJh´ mata), “mysteries of the Kingdom,” “God’s mysteries,” etc.—in Niketas. See C 1.1 (Filokali´a, 273; trans. Ware et al., p. 79); C 1.9 (275; p. 81); C 1.45 (283; p. 90); C 1.63 (288; p. 96); C 1.89 (294; p. 103); C 2.40 (307; p. 117); C 2.41 (307–8; p. 118); C 2.49 (310; p. 120); C 2.61 (313–14; p. 124); C 2.64 (314; p. 125); C 2.67 (315; p. 127); C 2.91 (322; p. 134); C 3.13 (329; p. 143); C 3.16 (330; p. 144); C 3.20 (331; p. 145); C 3.31 (333; p. 148); C 3.37 (334; p. 149); C 3.43–44 (336–37; pp. 151–52); C 3.72 (346; p. 163); C 3.80 (349; p. 166); C 3.83 (350; p. 167); C 3.86 (351; p. 168); Ep. 8.2 (SC, pp. 280–82); On Limits, 26 (SC, p. 390); and New Heavens, 1 (SC, p. 508). For an echo of this language in a late 4th-century ascetic writer, see the Letters of Ammonas, 8 (Syriac version), and Ammonas’ prayer for his correspondent that the Spirit reveal to him “all the mysteries of heaven” ( ), ed. M. Kmosko, PO (Paris, 1913 [fascicule], 1915), 10:587, line 10; and cf. also my remarks below on Niketas’ 4th-century roots, together with notes 47, 58–61, 66, and 83–84. 42 On the several titles: for (1) mesi´th", see C 1.35 (Filokali´a, 281; trans. Ware et al., p. 88); (2) hJgou´ meno", see Vie, chaps. 35–58 (pp. 46–78); (3) nomoqe´ th", see On Hierarchy, 2.11 (SC, p. 314); (4) oJdhgo´ ", see C 2.10 (300, p. 110); (5) dida´ skalo", see C 2.10 (300; p. 110); Vie de Syme´on, chaps. 10–12 (pp. 18–22); chap. 149 (pp. 220–22); Ep. 7.7 (SC, p. 280); and On Limits, 32–34 (SC, pp. 394–98); (6) ijatro´ ", see C 2.11 (301; p. 110); and 2.22–23 (303–4; p. 113); (7) nazirai'o", see C 2.7 (300; p. 109); (8) profh´ th", see C 2.34 (306; p. 116); 2.63 (314; p. 125); 2.66 (315; p. 126); 3.58 (341–42; p. 157); 3.89 (352; p. 169); and On Limits, 27 (SC, pp. 390–92), on “false prophets”; (9) sofo´ ", see 3.44 (336–37; pp. 151–52); 3.54 (340; p. 156) lit., partaking of wisdom; and, negatively, On the Canons, 1–2 and 9 (SC, pp. 464–66 and 472); (10) fi´lo" tou' qeou', filo" tou' aJgi´ou pneu´ mato", see C 2.34 (306; p. 116); and 3.58 (341; p. 157); (11) path` r pneumatiko´ ", see C 2.53–54 (311; p. 122); 3.12 (329; p. 143), on spiritual begetting; and Vie, chaps. 35–58 (pp. 46–78); (12) qeolo´ go", see C 3.44 (337; pp. 151–52); Vie, chap. 150 (p. 224); and On Hierarchy, 5.37 (SC, p. 340); (13) ajpo´ stolo", see On Hierarchy, 5.36 (SC, p. 338); (14) a“ggelo" ejpi´geio", a“nqrwpo" oujra´ nio", see C 2.51 (311; p. 121); Vie, chap. 113 (p. 156); On the Soul, 3.16 (SC, p. 78); and 10.54 (SC, p. 116).

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of the otherworldly being in the ancient apocalypses who acts as guide and interpreter for the seer, the angelus interpres, is taken over by the spiritual father. The latter, in and for himself, stands surely in the place of the ancient seer of apocalyptic. He is transformed into light and has acquired angelic status, but, and precisely in view of the latter change, he becomes indeed for others their “guide” and “interpreter,” the one who directs his disciples to a like experience of heaven and who then explains the vision’s meaning. Niketas certainly had two striking models for this figure, his own avowed master, Symeon the New Theologian, and the latter’s spiritual father, Symeon the Pious of the Stoudios. In the former’s vita, Niketas describes his master’s veneration, against the objections of contemporary church authorities, of the elder Symeon as a saint, and quotes the New Theologian as replying to his opponents that he had, after all, seen his venerable elder standing “at the right hand of the Glory of God.” 43 This is an allusion to the incident recorded both in the vita and by Symeon himself in his twenty-second Catechetical Discourse: the latter’s first vision, as a young man, of the uncreated light and of his elder standing within it.44 The old man “at the right hand of the Glory” recalls Acts 7:55–56 and Stephen’s vision of “the Glory of God” and of Christ “standing at the right hand of God.” The spiritual father as alter Christus, or imago Christi, is at the heart of the notion of the sanctified elder as a kind of theophany for his disciple precisely in light of the former’s function as mediator of the divine presence. This particular, eastern Christian, and especially monastic variant on the theme of the imitation of Christ is well enough known not to have to belabor it here, though I note that it must have been a central—or, better, the central— element in Niketas’ portrayal of his own elder and of Symeon the Pious. Recalling, however, the continuing presence of and interest in the apocryphal Old Testament in Christian circles, apocalyptic literature’s own influence on the portrayal of Christ in the New Testament, and Niketas’ use of the motifs of transformation into angelic status and sharing in the heavenly priesthood, it is reasonable to point also to the echo in his picture of Symeon the Pious “at the right hand of the Glory” of the ministering angel of the apocalypses who steps forward from his place beside the heavenly throne to assist the seer and explain his vision. In the canonical scriptures, one might think of Gabriel, clearly an intimate of the Presence, who is sent to explain things to Daniel in Daniel 8:16 ff, and then again, as a heavenly man with overtones of Ezekiel’s figure on the chariot throne, appearing for the same duties in Daniel 10:5 ff. In the Pseudepigrapha, the same pattern is repeated in the angel of the Presence, Jaoel, sent to conduct Abraham on his Vie, chap. 5 (p. 10, lines 20–21): to` n aujtou' pate´ ra ejk dexiw'n parestw'ta th'" do´ xh" oJrw'n tou' qeou'. See also chap. 90 (p. 124, lines 17–18), where the speaker is Symeon himself: “You were shown to me standing at the right hand of God” (wJ" ejmoi ejdei´cqh" ejk dexiw'n tou' qeou' parista´ meno"), and note Symeon’s prayer just above (line 16) to become th'" aujth'" soi do´ xh" koinwno´ ". 44 Vie, chap. 5 (pp. 8–10): “He [Symeon] received the power to see by virtue of the light and, behold, he saw the form of a brilliant cloud, without form or shape, and full of the ineffable Glory of God at the height of heaven, and he saw his own [spiritual] father, Symeon the Pious, standing at the right hand of this great cloud” (ejn gou'n tv' toiou´ tv fwti` ejnergou´ meno" ei«de, kai` ijdou` ei«do" fwteinota´ th" nefe´ lh" ajmo´ rfou te kai` ajschmati´stou kai` plh´ rou" ajrjrJtou do´ xh" qeou' eij" to` u”yo" tou' oujranou', ejk dexiw'n de` th'" toiau´ th" nefe´ lh" iJsta´ menon eJw´ ra to` n eJautou' pate´ ra Sumew´ nhn to` n eujlabh'). So see also Symeon’s own description in Catechetical Discourse, 22, ed. B. Krivocheine, SC (Paris, 1964), 104, pp. 102–4; trans. C. de Catanzaro, Symeon the New Theologian: The Discourses (New York, 1980), 246. 43

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heavenly tour in the Apocalypse of Abraham,45 or the angel of the seventh (i.e., highest) heaven, who is dispatched to provide the same service to the prophet in the Ascension of Isaiah.46 Both of these pseudepigrapha were circulating among Slavic-speaking Orthodox monks within a century or so of Niketas.47 Given the latter’s—and, as I have argued elsewhere, the New Theologian’s—fondness for Dionysios Areopagites,48 Dionysios himself may well have been alluding to the Ascension of Isaiah in Celestial Hierarchy 13, where, and not present in the canonical text of Isaiah 6:1–6, the prophet is conducted to the throne of Glory and visio dei by an angel who then explains the vision and the heavenly liturgy. Unlike the pseudepigraphon, however, and equally unlike both Niketas and the New Theologian, Dionysios spends considerable energy explaining why the angelus inApoc. Abr. 10:3–16; Charlesworth, 1:693–94. Note also Jaoel teaching Abraham the angelic song, which he is to “recite unceasingly,” in 17:4–21 (1:697), followed by the patriarch’s vision of the merkavah and “indescribable light” in the seventh heaven, 18:3–13 (1:698). On the important relationship of this pseudepigraphon to the later hekalot tradition of visionary ascent, see Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkabah, 52–57, particularly the elements of fasting, angelic song, and unceasing repetition. The last is perhaps of interest in view of the ancient monastic emphasis on “unceasing prayer,” especially in light of later developments regarding the “Jesus Prayer.” No one has yet sought to link the latter with ancient apocalyptic, even though the expression “pray without ceasing” is attested as early as the 1st century in St. Paul (1 Thess. 5:17), let alone chart its parallels in the hekalot texts; thus the possibilities await exploration. With regard to the hekalot literature, see the fascinating, 11th-century Jewish text cited by Morray-Jones, “Temple Within,” 425, with its near precise equivalence to later (?) hesychast practice: “who wishes to behold the Merkabah and the palaces . . . must sit in fast for a certain number of days and lay his head between his knees and whisper to the ground many hymns and songs. . . . He then gazes into the inner rooms and chambers as if he were seeing the seven palaces with his own eyes.” For a reliable summary of “unceasing prayer” in eastern ascetic literature, see K. T. Ware, “Ways of Prayer and Contemplation: Eastern,” in Christian Spirituality, vol. 1, Origins to the Twelfth Century, ed. B. McGinn, J. Meyendorff, and J. LeClerc (New York, 1989), 395–414, esp. 402–12. Likewise, the related Byzantine hesychast emphasis on the “uncreated light” seems to find an analogue in the rabbinic “splendor of the Shekinah” (‰ÈÎu‰ ÂÈÊ). On the latter, see I. Chernus, Mysticism in Rabbinic Judaism (BerlinNew York, 1982), esp. the chapter “Nourished by the Splendor of the Shekinah,” 74–87, and, for similar language in Symeon and Niketas, see above, notes 43–44 and below, note 53, together with notes 83–4 on the 4th-century Macarian Homilies and later works. 46 Asc. Is. 7:2 ff; Charlesworth, 2:165 ff. 47 See M. A. Knibb, “Introduction,” Charlesworth 2:145–46 for Asc Is, and R. Rubinkiewicz, “Introduction,” ibid., 1:681–82, for Apoc. Abr., and in greater detail for both, Turdeanu, Apocryphes slaves et roumains, 145–200. It is clear that at least the Ascension had been circulating among Christian ascetics since virtually the time of its composition by a Christian group near Antioch in the early 2d century. Thus see Acerbi, L’Ascensione di Isaia, 277–94. On this and other Old Testament pseudepigrapha, such as 2 Enoch, as favored reading among the medieval Bogomils, see I. Ivanov, Bogomil Books and Legends (Sofia, 1925), 131–227 (in Bulgarian). It was also, clearly, read and copied by Orthodox Slavic monks, and indeed by 4th-century monks as well. Thus recall Athanasios’ allusion above (and note 9) to an apocryphal book of Isaiah, and cf. another late 4thcentury work, the Letters of Ammonas (Syriac version), Ep. 10, quoting Asc. Is. 8:21, the prophet’s ascent to the seventh heaven, and then adding quite like Niketas above: “sunt homines super terram qui ad hanc mensuram pervenere,” PO 10:594 (lines 12–13 Latin, with the Syriac above, line 11). If not the complete text of the ancient work, Niketas may well have had available the Greek Legend of Isaiah, based on the apocryphon, and extant today in a 12th-century manuscript. See R. H. Charles, The Ascension of Isaiah (London, 1900), xxvii– xxviii on the Legend, and 141–48 for an edition of the text with phrases from the ancient apocryphon marked in heavy type. For Niketas’ use of Isaiah as an illustration of the heavenly ascent and transformation, see C 2.26 (Filokali´a, 304; trans. Ware et al., p. 114). 48 See Golitzin, “Anarchy vs. Hierarchy?” and, expanding on the latter with further documentation of Symeon’s admiration for Dionysios, especially with regard to the language of mystical experience, I. Perczel, “Denys l’Are´opagite et Syme´on le nouveau the´ologien,” in Denys l’Are´opagite et sa posterite´ en Orient et en Occident, ed. Y. de Andia (Paris, 1997), 341–57. 45

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terpres is merely an ordinary angel and not from the first level of the heavenly hierarchy, that is, one of the seraphim. The angels, he continues, doubtless to underscore one of his principal reasons for composing his very own New Testament pseudepigraphon, are to their highest officers as our priests are to their bishops.49 In other words, even ascetic visionaries, here represented by Isaiah, require the instruction of the clergy.50 From rabbinic circles roughly contemporary with Dionysios, one can point to the analogous figure of Metatron, the Angel of the Presence and even called “the Lesser YHWH,” who provides, in the opening chapters of 3 Enoch, safe passage to the heavenly courts together with an elaborate explanation of their hierarchies and the heavenly throne to Rabbi Ishmael.51 3 Enoch also features perhaps the most spectacular description of transformation into light and fire available in any of the apocalypses. Metatron was, after all, once the man Enoch, and he becomes an angel at the moment of his exaltation: “When the Holy One, blessed be He, took me to serve the throne of Glory . . . at once my flesh turned to flame, my sinews to blazing fire, my bones to juniper coals, my eyelashes to lightning flashes, my eyeballs to fiery torches, the hairs of my head to hot flames, all my limbs to wings of burning fire, and the limbs of my body to blazing fire.” 52 References to the vision of light, glory, or fire are so frequent in both Niketas and the New Theologian that I limit myself here to just a single incident, albeit a spectacular one: Niketas’ description of one of Symeon’s experiences in chapters 69–70 of the vita. The master is taken wholly out of himself, o”lw" ejxi´stato, finds himself permeated—not unlike Metatron—by the immaterial light (fw'" a“u¨ lon) of divinity, and is told by a heavenly voice, twice, that this is the transformation of the saints in the age to come.53 Here we do not a have a mere vision, but an actual if temporary transfiguration. 49 See Celestial Hierarchy, 13.4, PG 3:304B–5D; critical text ed. G. Heil and A. M. Ritter, Corpus Dionysiacum, vol. 2 (Berlin, 1991), 46:22–49:1; trans. P. Rorem and C. Luibheid, Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works (New York, 1987), 179–80. 50 The usual account of the Dionysian hierarchies reads them as a kind of thinly Christianized adaptation of late Neoplatonist, triadic ontology, thus most recently in A. M. Ritter, “Gregor Palamas als Leser des Dionysios Pseudo-Areopagita,” in de Andia, Denys l’Are´opagite (as above, note 48), 565–79. For a contrary view, see A. Golitzin, Et introibo ad altare dei: The Mystagogy of Dionysius Areopagita (Thessalonike, 1994), 167–230 and 359–92, arguing that they are instead based in great part on ascetical traditions, especially of Syrian provenance, and are designed to reconcile the ascetic visionary tradition with the sacramentally based polity of the church. A striking illustration of this presence of ascetical tradition in the Areopagitica would be to compare Celestial Hierarchy, 8.2 (PG 3:240D; ed. Heil and Ritter, 34:14–16), “the all-embracing principle that beings of the second rank receive enlightenment from beings of the first rank” (trans. Luibheid and Rorem, 168), with Palladios’ “Letter to Lausus,” prefacing his Lausiac History, which offers a virtually identical statement about angelic mediation, including the triadic form, with the purpose of illustrating the principle of spiritual instruction and obedience, i.e., that no one may trust his own will, experiences, or visions, but must test them against the counsel of those wiser than he: “The first order of beings have their learning from the most high Trinity, the second learns from the first, the third from the second, and so on. . . . Those who are higher in knowledge and virtue teach the lower.” R. T. Meyer, trans., Palladius: The Lausiac History, Ancient Christian Writers 34 (New York, 1964), 21; Greek text by C. Butler, The Lausiac History, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1904), 7. Dionysios simply puts the bishop (“hierarch”) in the place of the monastic elder, exactly the point of his exegesis here of Isa. 6:1–7. 51 See 3 Enoch 1:9 ff, trans. P. Alexander, in Charlesworth, 1:256 ff. 52 Ibid. 15, 1:267. See Morray-Jones, “Transformational Mysticism,” 7–11; and M. Idel, “Enoch Is Metatron,” Immanuel 24–25 (1990): 220–40, esp. 231–37, on Enoch’s experience here as that of exemplary mystic. 53 Vie, chaps. 69–70 (pp. 92–96). For more citations from Symeon on the visio luminis, and a discussion of his sources for it in scripture and the fathers, though without reference either to apocalyptic literature or to parallels in later Jewish mysticism, see the preliminary remarks in A. Golitzin, St. Symeon the New Theologian

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“INTERIORIZED APOCALYPTIC”: FOUR PRECEDENTS FROM FOURTH-CENTURY ASCETICAL WRITERS Participation in the angelic liturgy within the purified heart and the portrait of the transfigured elder or ge´ rwn that we have found in Niketas, together with the themes of light and the visio dei gloriae, are all instances of what I call “interiorized apocalyptic,” the transposition of the cosmic setting of apocalyptic literature, and in particular of the “out of body” experience of heavenly ascent and transformation, to the inner theater of the Christian soul, to “the great world,” as Niketas puts it, borrowing from Gregory of Nazianzos, “within the small.” 54 It seems clear that Niketas could well have read and found profitable some of the ancient pseudepigrapha. It is certainly the case that he incorporated into his thought materials and motifs stemming from the ancient literature at the same time as he recast them into a new, inner-oriented model. Or was that model so very new? We can surely find some basis for it in the foundational documents of Christianity, such as, for example, St. Paul’s promise of the “light of the glory of God in the face of Christ” shining within the Christian heart in 2 Corinthians 4:6, or the words of Christ in John 14:21–24 and 17:22–24, which speak of indwelling, epiphany, and of the gift of the same glory which he had with the Father “before the world was” (John 17:5). As one late fourth-century ascetic author put it, with Christ “everything [i.e., all the company of heaven] is to be found within.” 55 It is indeed to the fourth-century emergence of monasticism and the latter’s earliest documents that I should like to turn in this section. If there are certain new emphases in what we have seen of Niketas, there is still virtually nothing in his writings that does not have precedents in fourth- and early fifth-century monastic literature. Let me begin with the last item menon the Mystical Life: The Ethical Discourses, vol. 3: Life, Times, Theology (Crestwood, N.Y., 1997), 81–105; H. Alfeyev, “The Patristic Background of St. Symeon the New Theologian’s Doctrine of the Divine Light,” StP 32 (1997): 229–38 (very good for the echoes of Evagrios, Macarius, and Isaac); and J. A. McGuckin, “The Luminous Vision in Eleventh-Century Byzantium: Interpreting the Biblical and Theological Paradigms of St. Symeon the New Theologian,” in Work and Worship at the Theotokos Evergetis 1050–1200, ed. M. Mullett and A. Kirby (Belfast, 1997), 90–123. For Niketas’ references to transforming glory, light, or, as in 3 Enoch 15 above, fire, see: C 1.9 (Filokali´a, 275; trans. Ware et al., p. 81); C 1.20 (277; p. 84); C 1.56 (286; p. 93); C 1.63 (288; pp. 95–96); C 1.90 (295; p. 103): “the divine realms [to´ poi] of glory”; C 1.94 (295–96; p. 104); C 2.5 (299; p. 108); C 2.43 (308; p. 118); C 2.45 (309; p. 119): “immaterial, primal light” (aju?lou prw´ tou fwto´ "); C 2.50 (310–11; pp. 120–21): the “descent” (kata´ basi") of God in light on the “throne” of the intellect; C 2.100 (325; pp. 137–38): the eschaton anticipated in the experience of “eternal light”; C 3.20–21 (331; p. 145); C 3.31 (333; p. 148); C 3.37–38 (334–35; pp. 149–50); C 3.48 (338; p. 153); C 3.82–83 (350; pp. 166–67); Vie, chaps. 5 (pp. 8–10), 9 (pp. 16–18), 19 (p. 28), 23 (p. 32), 29 (p. 40), 33 (p. 44), 90 (p. 124), 111 (p. 154), 133 (pp. 192–94), 143 (pp. 210–12); On Soul, 6.30 (SC, p. 92); 11.61 (SC, pp. 122–4); 13.70 (SC, p. 132); and 14.79 (SC, pp. 144–46). 54 See Niketas’ On the Soul, 27 (SC, pp. 88–90) and note 35 above. With the expression “interiorized apocalyptic,” I mirror in reverse part of Nicholas Constas’ concluding observations, on page 123 of this volume, in “‘To Sleep, Perchance to Dream’: The Middle State of Souls in Patristic and Byzantine Literature”: “In Byzantium, the afterlife was the inner life turned inside out and writ large upon the cosmos. The contours and dimensions of the inner world shaped the landscape of the outer world, producing an alternative world through the subjective transformation of self ”—apocalypse, in other words, as exteriorized mystical experience. We were both surprised to find our papers reflecting each other in this unexpected way. 55 Macarian Homilies, Collection III, Homily 8.1.5; text in ed. V. Desprez, SC (Paris, 1980), 275, p. 144, line 50. For the great frequency in “Macarius” of just those New Testament texts cited above, together with other and related passages (e.g., Eph. 4:13, Phil. 3:21, etc.), see the citations in A. Golitzin, “Temple and Throne of the Divine Glory: Pseudo-Macarius and Purity of Heart,” in Purity of Heart in Early Ascetic and Monastic Literature, ed. H. Luckman and L. Kulzer (Collegeville, Minn., 1999), 107–29, esp. 121–24, and in note 84 below.

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tioned above, the portrait of the transfigured elder, and then conclude with a brief sketch of four fourth-century writers in whom we can see the same process of interiorization at work as in Niketas. The Christian holy man of late antiquity has been in the scholarly spotlight ever since Peter Brown’s seminal article on the subject more than a generation ago. Brown’s focus was also precisely on the mediatorial capacity and function of the sainted ascetic, the latter as a meeting place between heaven and earth, and thus as a social force.56 More recent—and less sociologically driven—research into the leading figures, and their portraits, of early Egyptian monasticism (Brown had concentrated on 5th-century Syria, especially on the figure of Symeon Stylites57) in the fourth century has come up with similar pictures. I might point, for example, to the stress on the direct link with the prophets and apostles which the Pachomian Koinonia saw embodied in its founder, together with the portrayal of Pachomios as locus of the divine presence and even, in one text, as intercessor at the heavenly throne.58 At least according to the Bohairic Life, the great koinobiarch was also a visionary, and the content of three of the visions in the same source bears an unmistakable resemblance to accounts in the ancient apocalypses of the heavenly throne.59 One may turn for stories of actual ascents to heaven to the Historia monachorum in Aegypto, which is rife with them, as well as, and still more often, monastic 56 P. Brown, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” JRS 61 (1971): 80–101, reprinted in expanded form in Brown, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, Calif., 1982), 103–52. 57 For an account of Simeon Stylites that is peculiarly sensitive to the themes of this essay—light and fire, transformation, converse with angels, identification with the prophets, and “new Moses” (recall Niketas’ nomoqe´ th" in note 42 above, and cf. note 58 below), etc.—see S. A. Harvey, “Sense of a Stylite: Perspectives on Symeon the Elder,” VChr 42 (1988): 376–94, esp. 381–86 on the Syriac vita. 58 For the insistence on continuities with the prophets and apostles, see, e.g., the opening two paragraphs of the Vita Prima, with its implicit comparison of Pachomios to Abraham, Moses, the martyrs, Elijah, Elisha, and John the Baptist, in The Pachomian Koinonia, ed. and trans. A. Veilleux, 3 vols. (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1980), 1:297–98; for commentary, see P. Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority, and the Church (Oxford, 1978), 18–67; idem, Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt (Berkeley, Calif., 1985), 77–148; and esp. M. S. Burrows, “On the Visibility of God in the Holy Man: A Reconsideration of the Role of the Apa in the Pachomian Vitae,” VChr 41 (1987): 11–33, for the themes of mediator, physician, lawgiver, and father—the imago Christi, in short—and 22–23 for Burrows’ offhand parallel of the apa with the rabbi as the latter appears in Talmudic literature. For Pachomios as intercessor, see The Tenth Sahidic Life, frag. 7, in Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:457. Comparison with the apostles and prophets had become virtually formulaic by the time of Besa’s Life of Shenute; see The Life of Shenute by Besa (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1983), trans. D. N. Bell, e.g., pp. 41 and 48 ff. On the figure of the spiritual father in two other 4th-century ascetics, see G. Bunge, Geistliche Vaterschaft: Christliche Gnosis bei Evagrios Pontikos (Regensburg, 1988), esp. 33–36 (imitatio Christi), 40–44 (“true gnostic” and visio dei), 45–50 (physician and teacher), and 69–72 (the “mystagogue”); and ¨rries, Die Theologie des Makarios/Symeon (Go ¨ttingen, 1978), esp. 336–66 on “The Charismatic Teacher.” H. Do 59 See Bohairic Life, 73, 76, and 184, in Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:95–96, 99–100, and 219–20. All three are classical throne visions, the seated Majesty (here Christ) accompanied by the angels of the Presence, and cf. Pachomios’ several ascents to Paradise in Bohairic Life, 114 (Veilleux, 1:166–68). A. Guillaumont, “Les visions mystiques dans le monachisme oriental chre´tien,” in idem, Aux origines du monachisme chre´tien (Bellefontaine, 1979), 139–42, perhaps put off by their “primitive” quality, thinks these visions late and not genuinely Pachomian. I am not so persuaded. Thus see also the Pachomian Paraleipomena, 18 (Veilleux, 2:40; Greek text in F. Halkin, S. Pachomii vitae graecae, SubsHag 19 [Brussels, 1932], 141–43, here 142, lines 13–14), and Pachomios’ vision of Christ, “the Lord of Glory,” as a “youth” (neani´sko") of “ineffable countenance” accompanied by angels, and cf. the introduction of Metatron as “youth,” na’ar (¯Ú), in 3 Enoch 2:2. For comment on the latter, see Alexander’s n. 3a, in Charlesworth, 1:257; Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, 50–51; and, on its presence earlier in the Enochic tradition, A. A. Orlov, “Titles of Enoch-Metatron in 2 Enoch,” Journal of the Pseudepigrapha 18 (1998): 71–86, esp. 80–82.

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conversation and comparison with angels.60 The Apophthegmata Patrum present us with at least two examples of ascent to the throne of Glory in Abba Silvanus, while the latter, together with the Abbas Sisoes, Pambo, and Arsenios, also provide instances of transformation via heavenly light or fire.61 The lo´ go" or rJh'ma of the desert abbas, with its power to inform and shape the disciple for salvation, provided the latter take it to heart, should recall the u”dwr pisto´ n that Niketas ascribed to the ascetic visionary. It is a word of life, pregnant with the Holy Spirit and thus authoritative, backed by the elder’s experience.62 Regarding the phrase “earthly angel–heavenly man,” I can point in the Apophthegmata Pateron to the analogous and indeed even more extraordinary expression, qeo` " ejpi´geio", applied at least once to one of the abbas, Macarius the Great, because he “covered the sins of the brethren.” 63 In sum, virtually all the long list of titles for the spiritual father noted above in Niketas, together with their occasionally implicit and even explicit evoca60 In the Historia monachorum in Aegypto, critical text ed. A.-H. Festugie`re (Brussels, 1971), see Patermuthis 21–22 (Festugie`re, pp. 83–84), Sourous 5–7 (pp. 91–92), and Macarius 5–12 (pp. 125–26) for trips to Paradise and, in Sourous’ case, to the heavenly court. On converse with angels, see Apollo 5–6 (pp. 48–49), 16–17 (pp. 52–53), 38–41 (pp. 62–63), 44–47 (pp. 63–65); Helle 1–4 (pp. 92–93) and 14–15 (pp. 96–97); Sourous 8 (p. 92); and Paphnutius 23–24 (pp. 109–10). See also “Prologue,” 5 (Festugie`re, p. 7) on the “angelic life” of the monks, and John of Lycopolis 6 (p. 34) on the monk as “standing in the presence of God” and participating in the angelic choirs. Note at the same time a clear instance of polemic against visions of the merkabah type in Or 9 (Festugie`re, p. 38), and cf. Palladios, Lausiac History, 25.4–5 on the monk Valens, who is deceived by the devil posing as Christ atop a “fiery wheel” (tro´ co" pu´ rino"); Greek in Butler, 80, line 1; trans. Meyer, p. 85. Ananisho, Palladios’ 7th-century translator into Syriac, renders the “fiery wheel” as a , “chariot of fire” (ed. R. Draguet, CSCO [Louvain, 1978], 398, p. 213, lines 13–14). Related to the polemic, see my remarks on Evagrios and others, below, note 102, and at greater length in “Forma lui dumnezeu si Vederea Slavei: Reflectii asupra controversei anthropomorphite din annul 399 d. Hr.,” in A. Golitzin, Mistagogia: Experienta lui dumnezeu in Ortodoxie, trans. I. Ica, Jr. (Sibiu, 1998), 184–267, esp. 196–208 and 243 n. 81. On the theme of monasticism as the “angelic life,” though without reference to the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and Jewish background, see the older studies of P. Suso Frank, Angelikos ¨hen Mo¨nchtum Bios: Begriffsanalytische und begriffsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zum “engelgleichen Leben” im fru (Mu ¨ nster, 1964), and P. Nagel, Die Motivierung der Askese in der alten Kirche und der Ursprung des Mo¨nchtums (Berlin, 1966), esp. 20–79. 61 Silvanus 2–3 (PG 65:409A). In Silvanus 3 the old man’s disciple asks him what he saw in a trance. After much insistence, the elder finally tells him: “I was caught up into heaven [eij" to` n oujrano` n hJrpa´ ghn] and saw the Glory of God [ei«don th` n do´ xan tou' qeou'], and there I was standing [iJsta´ mhn] until now, and now I have been sent away.” The rapture, aJrpagh´ , surely recalls 2 Cor. 12:2 ff; the visio dei gloriae is likewise out of apocalyptic throne visions, while the “standing” is itself a feature of angelic ministry before the throne in Jewish literature: “There is no sitting in heaven; the angels have no joints” [i.e., to bend in order to sit]; yBerakot, 2c, cited in Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkabah Mysticism, 66. Cf. also Symeon the Pious in notes 43–44 above, parista´ meno", iJsta´ meno", and John of Lycopolis, in note 60. On monastic transformations into fire or light, see Arsenios 27 (PG 65:96BC), Joseph of Panephysis 7 (229CD), Pambo 12 (372A), Sisoes 14 (396BC), Silvanus 12 (412C), and, for brief comment, G. Gould, The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community (Oxford, 1993), 177–82. See also, if from a polemical perspective (anti-Palamite) and with no sense of the Jewish ¨nche des vierzehnten und des background, the still valuable article by H.-V. Beyer, “Die Lichtlehre der Mo ¨rtet am Beispiel des Gregorios Siniaites, des Evagrios Pontikos, und des Psvierten Jahrhunderts, ero ¨ B 31.1 (1981): 473–512, and, more recently on the phenomenon, C. Stewart, Cassian Makarios/Symeon,” JO the Monk (Oxford, 1998), 55–60 and 114–22. 62 “The abba . . . was the one who discerned reality and whose words, therefore, gave life . . . the word that was sought was not a theological explanation, nor was it ‘counseling’ . . . it was a word . . . that would give life to the disciple if it were received.” B. Ward, “Translator’s Foreword,” in The Desert Christian: The Sayings of the Fathers, the Alphabetical Collection (New York, 1980), xix–xx. 63 Macarius the Egyptian 32 (PG 65:273D). See also Burrows, “On the Visibility of God,” 16, applying the same expression to Pachomios. On the expression ejpi´geioi a“ggeloi as “the Jewish equivalent of the Hellenistic qei'oi a“ndre",” see Fletcher-Louis, Luke–Acts, 201.

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tion of the apocalyptic angelus interpres, appear in the words or certainly in the substance of the original literature of monasticism. Turning to the four writers of the fourth century, I have chosen these exemplars in order to provide a variety of backgrounds and locations and give examples of authors relatively contemporary with each other, thus illustrating the simultaneity across linguistic and national boundaries of a process involving ascetics in the interiorization of the apocalyptic motifs noted in Niketas, particularly of the visio dei in the heavenly temple. Two of these authors wrote exclusively in Syriac, Ephrem Syrus and the anonymous author of the Liber Graduum, the first from within Roman Syria and the latter from across the border in Sassanid Persia.64 Neither of them would have been known to Niketas, whose knowledge of Ephrem would certainly have been limited to the writings of “Ephrem Graecus,” which are not, in fact, the authentic products of the Syrian poet. The second pair, Evagrios Pontikos (d. 399) and the unknown author of the Macarian Homilies, Niketas would certainly have known of and likely read, at least in part. Evagrios was an accomplished Hellenist, learned and philosophically inclined.65 The Macarian Homilist was clearly fluent in Greek, much less interested in systematizing, and versed as well in local Syrian traditions.66 The two Syriac writers’ formal knowledge, in Ephrem’s phrase, For Ephrem’s Paradise Hymns, cited below, see E. Beck’s edition of the critical text in CSCO 174 and the trans. by S. Brock, Hymns on Paradise (Crestwood, N.Y., 1990). For the Liber Graduum, see M. Kmosko’s critical text in PS 3, and the trans. of Mimro 12 (⫽ PS 3:284–304) by S. Brock, The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the ´d, Spiritual Life (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1987), 45–53. On Ephrem’s links with Jewish traditions, see esp. N. Se “Les Hymnes sur paradis de saint Ephrem et les traditions juives,” Le Muse´on (1968): 455–501—esp. 468 and 482 for echoes of the hekalot texts and the rabbinic shekinah—and, more briefly, in Brock, “Introduction,” Hymns on Paradise, 39–74. 65 The literature on Evagrios is large and growing. For the texts cited below, see W. Frankenberg, Evagrius Ponticus (Berlin, 1912); A. Guillaumont, Kephalaia Gnostica, PO 28:17–257; A. and C. Guillaumont, Traite´ pratique ou le moine, SC 170–71 (Paris, 1971); trans. J. E. Bamberger, The Praktikos and the Chapters on Prayer (Spencer, Mass., 1970); De oratione, under the name of Neilos of Sinai, PG 79:1165A–1290C, and Nikodemos Hagiorites, Filokali´a, 1:176–89; trans. Ware et al., 1:55–71. For secondary studies, see A. Guillaumont, Les ‘Kephalaia Gnostica’ d’Evagre le Pontique (Paris, 1962); idem, “Les visions mystiques” and “Un philosophe au de´sert: Evagre le Pontique,” in Aux origines, 136–48 and 185–212; idem, “La vision de l’intellect par luimeˆme dans la mystique ´evagrienne,” MUSJ 50.1–2 (1984): 255–62; N. Se´d, “La shekinta et ses amis ‘arame´ens’,” in Me´langes Antoine Guillaumont: Contribution `a l’e´tude des christianismes orientaux, ed. P. Cramer, Cahiers d’orientalisme 20 (1988): 233–42; G. Bunge, “On the Trinitarian Orthodoxy of Evagrius of Pontus,” Monastic Studies 17 (1987): 191–208; idem, “Nach dem Intellekt Leben? Zum sogenannten ‘Intellektualismus’ der evagria¨r Klaus Gamber, ed. W. Nyssen (Cologne, nischen Spiritualita¨t,” in Simandron, der Wachklopfer: Gedankenschrift fu 1989), 95–109; idem, “Palladiana I: Introduction aux fragments coptes de l’Histoire Lausiaque,” Studia monastica 33 (1991): 7–21; and J. Driscoll, The Mind’s Long Journey to the Holy Trinity: The Ad Monachos of Evagrius Ponticus (Collegeville, Minn., 1993). 66 “Macarius,” not the writer’s actual name which remains unknown, has come down to us in four medieval collections. The oldest, Collection IV, has not yet appeared in a critical text. The other three include ¨rries, E. Klostermann, and M. Kro ¨ger, V. Desprez’ edition of Collection III for SC, cited above, note 55; H. Do eds., Collection II, Die 50 geistlichen Homilien des Makarios (Berlin, 1964); H. Berthold’s edition of Collection I, Makarios/Symeon. Reden und Briefen: Die Sammlung I des Vaticanus Graecus 694 (B), 2 vols. (Berlin, 1973); and ¨ttingen, 1980). Secondary works of R. Staats’ edition of the Great Letter, Makarios-Symeon: Epistola Magna (Go ¨ berlieferung des messalianischen Makarios¨rries, Symeon von Mesopotamien. Die U particular note include: H. Do Schriften (Leipzig, 1941); idem, Die Theologie des Makarios/Symeon; G. Quispel, “Sein und Gestalt,” in Studies in Religion and Mysticism Presented to Gershom Scholem (Jerusalem, 1967); idem, Makarios, das Thomasevangelium, und das Lied von der Perle (Leiden, 1967) (very suggestive for Macarius’ background in both the Thomas tradition and Jewish thought); R. Staats, “Messalianerforschung und Ostkirchenkunde,” in Makarios Sympo¨ber das Bo¨se, ed. W. Strothmann (Go ¨ttingen, 1983), 47–71; V. Desprez, “Introduction,” SC 275, 13–70; sium u idem, “Le bapteˆme chez le Pseudo-Macaire,” Ecclesia Orans 5 (1988): 121–55; C. Stewart, “Working the Earth of the Heart”: The Messalian Controversy in History, Texts, and Language to A.D. 431 (Oxford, 1991); K. Fitschen, 64

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of “the poison of the Greeks” was modest at best. There is no evidence, finally, that any one of the four knew any of the others, though certainly Evagrios and probably “Macarius” had some acquaintance with the Cappadocians, and both were aware of and used the traditions of Alexandrian spiritual exegesis. Yet, in spite of this mutual ignorance, each writer is, in his own idiom, engaged in the same project of interiorization that I have sketched in Niketas. In Ephrem, to begin with possibly the earliest of the four, this engagement appears particularly in the cycle of the Hymns on Paradise.67 Woven throughout these fifteen songs, especially in the second and third, is a series of parallels: the mountain of paradise, with the Sinai of theophany, the temple of Jerusalem, and the human being who is body, soul, and spirit ( , ruho).68 In paradise Adam was the intended priest of the sanctuary of the Tree of Life: his “keeping of the commandments,” says Ephrem, “was to be his censer. Then he might enter before the Hidden One into the hidden Tabernacle.” 69 Christ has restored access to the hidden sanctuary and is himself both the Tree of Life and the Shekinto ( ) there enthroned. By implication, thus, it is the calling of the Christian to enter and worship before that same Presence (shekinto, equivalent to the rabbinic Shekinah) within the holy of holies of the human spirit.70 To ascend the mount of theophany with Moses is therefore to enter before the inner throne of the heart, there to discover paradise, heaven, within. At about the same time, or perhaps a little later, the Liber Graduum is struggling to hold together freelance ascetics, disdainful of institutions and clergy, and ecclesiastics suspicious of unruly, charismatic wanderers. The Liber wants to affirm both experience ¨ttingen, 1998); and see also Messalianismus und Antimessalianismus: Ein Beispiel ostkirchlicher Ketzergeschichte (Go Golitzin, “Hierarchy vs. Anarchy?” 157–62; Et introibo, 373–85; and “Temple and Throne of the Divine Glory.” As the bibliography indicates, much space has been devoted to Macarius’ place in the “Messalian” controversy of ca. 380–431, with a great deal of confessional polemic clouding the picture. Staats, Desprez, Stewart, and Fitschen have been instrumental for clearing Macarius of the heretical Messalian charge and revealing him as instead, in Desprez’ phrase, standing at the “confluence” (“Introduction,” SC 275, pp. 54–56) of several different currents of tradition—Greek Alexandrian, Cappadocian, and Syrian Christian, including the Thomas tradition and Manicheanism. Quispel’s suggestion of continuities with Jewish traditions has, unfortunately, not yet been taken up by scholars, save for some very preliminary efforts in my “Temple and Throne of the Divine Glory.” The subject awaits investigation and promises considerable results, up to and including the sources of “Messalianism” itself in apocalyptic ascent and vision traditions. On the antiquity of these currents in Christianity, especially in Christian Syria, see J. Fossum, The Image of the Invisible God: Essays ¨ttingen, 1995); Acerbi, L’Ascensione di Isaia, 83–98 and on the Influence of Jewish Mysticism on Early Christology (Go 210–53; and A. DeConick, Seek to See Him: Ascent and Vision Mysticism in the Gospel of Thomas (Leiden, 1996), 21–23, and 41–147 on ascent, Christ as Glory, and the visio dei luminis. On the Gospel of Thomas as our oldest source for the use of the word monaco´ " to signify a Christian ascetic, see esp. F. E. Morard, “Monachos, ¨r Philosophie und Theologie 20 (1973): 332– Moine. Histoire du terme grecque jusqu’au IVe sie`cle,” Zeitschrift fu 411, and esp. on Thomas, 362–77. 67 For an argument that the Liber Graduum is in fact older, see Fitschen, Messalianismus, 108–19, who reckons it as contemporary with Aphrahat, i.e., mid-4th century. 68 For a synoptic sketch of these parallels, see the chart in Brock, Hymns on Paradise, 53, and the brief discussion in Golitzin, Et introibo, 368–71. 69 De par. 3.16 (CSCO 174, p. 12; trans. Brock, p. 96). On Adam as priest and Eden as sanctuary in the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha—Jubilees in particular—and in rabbinic thought, see G. Anderson, “Celibacy or Consummation in the Garden? Reflections on Early Jewish and Christian Interpretations of the Garden of Eden,” HTR 82.2 (1989): 121–48, citing Ephrem (142–45). 70 De par. 2.12; 3.1, 6, and 12–13 (CSCO, pp. 7, 9, and 11; trans. Brock, pp. 88–89, 92, and 94–95). See also Se´d, “Les Hymnes sur Paradis,” 482, on shekinto in Ephrem and the rabbinic shekinah.

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and institution, vision and sacraments. It finds a solution in the declaration that “there are three churches, and [that each and together] their ministries possess life.” The three are the church “on high” ( , l’el, or “heavenly,” , shmayyono), that is, the heavenly temple, the church on earth with its sacraments and clergy, and the “little church” of the heart.71 Through God’s economy in Christ, the second is the necessary and mediating term which has been called into being in order to open up the first, the heavenly temple, to access for the third, the human heart. As the Liber puts it: “By starting from these visible things, and provided our bodies become temples and our hearts altars, we may find ourselves in their heavenly counterparts . . . migrating there and entering in while we are still in this visible church.” 72 In other words, the liturgy of heaven becomes an accessible experience—even “in this world,” bhon olmo ( ), as the Liber remarks elsewhere73 —through the visible church’s sacraments and a corresponding ascesis of heart and body. To disdain the visible church, on the other hand, means that our body “will not become a temple, nor our heart an altar . . . nor shall we have revealed to us that church on high with its altar, its light, and its priesthood.” 74 It is surely not difficult to discern in these passages themes dear to the apocalypses. In the fifty-second homily of the longer and less well known Collection I of the Macarian Homilies, the homilist presents us with a second ascetic writer who is concerned to affirm that the Holy Spirit is “present and takes part in all the liturgy of the holy church of God.” 75 The worship of the church carries a “real presence,” as it were, but, at the same time, in its outward and visible form it is also an “icon . . . [given] in order that . . . faithful souls may be made again and renewed, and having received transformation [metabolh´ ], be enabled to inherit life everlasting.” 76 Thus, the homilist continues, this “visible temple [is a type] of the temple of the heart, and the priest [a type] of the true priest of the grace of Christ . . . [and the whole] arrangement and manifestation of the church a pattern [uJpo´ deigma] for [what is] at work in the soul by grace.” 77 So far, then, we find the notes of inner church, temple, and priesthood expressed in terms that Niketas effectively would duplicate seven hundred years later. It also becomes clear, a little later in the same homily, that “Macarius”—to give this writer the name he has gone by for centuries—understands the inner shrine and its liturgy as a participation in the worship and priesthood of heaven. The “arrangement,” oijkonomi´a, of the church 71 PS 3:293, lines 23–24 and 296, lines 8–10 (trans. Brock, p. 49). On the Liber’s and Macarius’ coordination of the churches of heaven, earth, and the heart, its setting, background, and future in Syrian Christianity, see R. Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom: A Study in Early Syriac Tradition (Cambridge, 1975), 262–76; Desprez, “Le bapteˆme,” 125–30; S. Brock, “Fire from Heaven: From Abel’s Sacrifice to the Eucharist. A Theme in Syrian Christianity,” StP 25 (1993): 229–43; and Stewart, “Working the Earth of the Heart,” 218–21. On the presence and continuity of this coordination in later Byzantine theology, including Dionysios, Symeon, and Niketas, see Golitzin, “Anarchy vs. Hierarchy,” and, drawing instead chiefly on Maximos the Confessor and without mention of the Syrians (or of either Dionysios or Symeon), M. Van Parys, “La liturgie du coeur chez S. Gre´goire le Sinaı¨te,” Ire´nikon 51 (1978): 312–37. 72 PS 3, Mimro 12, vol. 288, line 23–289, line 1 (trans. Brock, p. 46). 73 Mimro 15, PS 3:373, lines 12–13. 74 Mimro 12, 289, lines 14–22 (trans. Brock, p. 46). 75 Berthold, Makarios/Symeon. Reden und Briefen, vol. 2:139, lines 7–9 (trans. Golitzin, “Anarchy vs. Hierarchy,” 177). 76 Berthold, Makarios/Symeon, 139, line 40–140, line 2. 77 Ibid., 140, lines 3–8 (trans. Golitzin, “Anarchy vs. Hierarchy,” 177–78).

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which he mentions above signifies the “geography,” as it were, of the assembled worshipers, with its progression from the narthex or porch to the laity in the nave, to the deacons (lit., ministers, leitourgoi´) serving before, and the presbyters (lit., pa´ redroi) standing beside, the bishop’s throne in the apse.78 Likewise, Macarius concludes, the soul that struggles and progresses in the virtues “is made worthy of promotion and of spiritual rank” in order to be included “with the blameless ministers and assistants [lit., leitourgoi` kai` pa´ redroi] of Christ,” which is to say, as I read this passage, with the angelic ministers (recall Ps. 103:4, LXX, the “ministers [leitourgoi´] of fire”) and the heavenly beings who stand beside the throne of glory (and cf. Wisd. 9:4 for wisdom as angelic pa´ redro" of the heavenly throne).79 Stronger still along the same lines is the first homily in the more familiar Collection II, the Fifty Spiritual Homilies, where Macarius begins with the chariot vision of the first chapter of Ezekiel. He cites the latter in full, and then goes on to state that “the prophet beheld the mystery of the soul that is going to receive its Lord and become His throne of glory.” 80 This deliberate interiorization of Ezekiel’s throne vision was noticed sixty years ago by Gershom Scholem, who rightly pointed out that the homilist was offering his readers “a mystical reinterpretation of the merkavah tradition.” 81 Neither is Macarius’ “mystery of the soul” confined to the eschaton, since he also means it to signify the experience of the same light, “shining within the heart, as will shine from the bodies of the blessed in the age to come.” 82 Indeed, Homily 8 of Collection II, just quoted, also expressly mentions a “robe of light not made with hands” as one of the modalities of the light that Macarius later admits he has seen within himself. The robe must surely remind us of the glorious robe given to the biblical forefather in the citation from 2 Enoch above with which I began.83 Heaven is therefore obtainable, be it only for a moment, even now—ajpo` tou' nu'n, as Macarius is fond of repeating (and recall the Liber above, bhon olmo).84 Christ and his angels, as the homilist writes elsewhere, make their throne within 78 Berthold, Makarios/Symeon, 141, lines 13–15 (trans. Golitzin, “Anarchy vs. Hierarchy,” pp. 178–79). I borrow the use and sense of the expression “geography” of the church from A. Louth, Denys the Areopagite (Wilton, Conn., 1989), 54–55. 79 Ibid., 142, lines 9–16 (trans. Golitzin, “Anarchy vs. Hierarchy,” p. 179). 80 ¨rries, Die 50 geistlichen Homilien, pp. 1–2; trans. G. Maloney, PseudoCollection II, Homily 1.1–2; Do Macarius: The Fifty Spiritual Homilies and the Great Letter (New York, 1992), 37–38. Cf. also Hom. 33.2 (ed. ¨rries, 258–59; trans. Maloney, 202) for Ezekiel’s chariot as a type of the soul. Do 81 Scholem, Major Trends, 79. I know of no one in Macarian studies who has picked up on Scholem’s observation here, even though it is so obviously right. 82 ¨rries, 78–79; trans. Maloney, 81–82). Homiliy 8.3 (ed. Do 83 ¨rries, 79; trans. Maloney, 82). On the notion of the luminous robe, or robe of light, see Ibid. (ed. Do S. Brock, “Clothing Metaphors as a Means of Theological Expression in Syriac Tradition,” Typus, Symbol, Allegorie bei den ¨ostlichen Va¨tern und ihren Parallelen im Mittelalter, ed. M. Schmidt and C. F. Geyer (Regensburg, 1982), 11–38, and relatedly, A. Goshen-Gottstein, “The Body as Image of God in Rabbinic Literature,” HTR 87.2 (1994): 171–95, esp. 178–83 and 190–95 on the “body of light.” Cf. also the clothing of Thomas with the robe of light which carries—or equates with—the imago dei, and therewith his ascent to the “gate of greeting” to worship Christ, the “Radiance [fe´ ggo"] of the Father,” in the Acta Thomae 112–13, ed. M. Bonnet, Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha, vol. 2.1 (1903; repr. Hildesheim, 1959), 223–24; New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 2, Writings Related to the Apostles, Apocalypses and Related Subjects, ed. W. Schneemelcher, trans. R. McL. Wilson, rev. ed. (Louisville, Ky., 1992), 384–85. Macarius’ robe and vision of light, via the Thomas literature, are clearly in the lineage of Jewish traditions, and, just as clearly, Niketas and his master are in continuity with Macarius. Thus see above, notes 36–37, 43–45, and 53, and below, note 84. 84 For the expression, ajpo` tou' nu'n, see, e.g., in Collection I: Homilies 33.3.6 (Berthold, Makarios/Symeon. Reden und Briefen, vol. 2:31, line 14); 34.1 (2:34, lines 4–5); 50.2.3 (2:127, line 1); 54.4.6 (2:157, line 12); and

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the heart,85 such that: “He ministers to her [the soul] in the city of her body, and she in turn ministers to Him in the heavenly city.” 86 Evagrios Pontikos, the last of the four, spent his final twelve years in the desert of the Cells, between Nitria and Scete, dying there in 399. While his name and many of his works were officially rejected in 553, he is nonetheless recognized today as one of the great architects of eastern Christian spirituality.87 Niketas would surely have known of Evagrios’ treatise, the Praktikos, which continued to circulate under the latter’s own name, as well as other materials, including the exceedingly influential De oratione, which were preserved in Greek under the respectable name of Neilos of Sinai, just as they continue to be today in Nikodemos Hagiorites’ Philokalia and in volume seventy-nine of Migne’s Patrologia graeca.88 In one of the latter works, Evagrios takes the eucharistic words of Christ and applies them to the intellect, nou'", in order to conclude, by way of an added reference to the throne vision of Isaiah 6, that the intellect is the “divine throne.” “For it is there,” he continues, “that God takes His seat and there that He is known.” 89 In two passages taken, respectively, from the Kephalaia Gnostica and the corpus of Evagrios’ letters, works presently extant only in Syriac translation, we hear echoes of the temple: “The intelligible temple is the pure intellect which now possesses in itself the ‘wisdom of 58.2.5 (2:184, line 25). Each of these citations occurs in a context clearly related to the current traced here, e.g., the heavenly “palaces” in the first example as now an interior reality, and in the remarkable catena of texts—2 Cor. 4:6, Ps. 12:4, Ps. 118:18, Ps. 42:3, Acts 26:13 ff (Paul’s conversion, the light on the Damascus road), 1 Cor. 15:48, John 3:6, John 1:13, 1 Cor. 14:49 (the “man from heaven”), Rom. 13:14, Phil. 3:21 (Christ’s “body of glory”), and 1 Cor. 2:9—that Macarius uses in Homily 58 to support his insistence that the heavenly light which comes to the blessed even in this life is not a no´ hma, a creation of the human intellect, but a be´ baion uJpostatiko` n fw'" (2:183, lines 14–15). 2 Cor. 4:6, 1 Cor. 15:48–49, and Phil. 3:21 are also particularly redolent of the Jewish background of the “luminous image” and “body of light.” See above, note 83, and A. Segal, Paul the Convert, 9–22, on the Lucan account of Paul’s conversion, and 58–64 on “Paul’s Mystical Vocabulary,” where several of the same texts that Macarius cites here turn up in Segal’s argument for the Apostle as a 1st-century “witness to merkabah mysticism” (Paul the Convert, 11). Along these same lines, see also J. Tabor, Things Unutterable: Paul’s Ascent to Heaven in Its Greco-Roman, Judaic, and Early Christian Contexts (Lanham, Md., 1986), esp. 11–21 and 83–97 on merkabah elements in Paul; and, more recently, C. R. A. Morray-Jones, “Paradise Revisited (2 Cor. 12:1–12): The Jewish Mystical Background of Paul’s Apostolate,” HTR 86 (1993): 177–217 and 265–92. See above, note 36, for Niketas on the ascent of 2 Cor. 12 as denoting entry into the “inner Paradise” and before the “throne of the Trinity.” Cf. Symeon on the same text and the light of the Trinity in Ethical Discourse, 3, Traite´s the´ologiques et ´ethique, ed. J. Davrouze`s, SC (Paris, 1966), 122, pp. 247–309, together with Alfeyev, “The Patristic Background,” on Symeon’s sources for the divine light, and Golitzin, Symeon the New Theologian: Life, Times, Theology, 182 and n. 27 on this interpretation of the Pauline text in Gregory Palamas, Triads, 1.3.5 and 21–22, together with E. Lanne, “L’interpre´tation palamite de la vision de Saint Benoıˆt,” in Le mille´naire de Mont Athos (Venice, 1963), 2:21–47. Taken all together, the outlines of a remarkable continuity seem to me to be unmistakable. Thus, and given especially his complete lack of acquaintance with eastern Christianity (as evident, e.g., in his remarks in Paul the Convert, 61), Segal’s merkabah-inspired account of Paul’s mysticism, Christology, and soteriology as amounting in sum to a sketch of the central eastern Christian doctrine of theosis—including what is effectively an early version of the 14thcentury hesychasts’ mysticism of the “uncreated light”—is almost eerie. 85 ¨rries, 146; trans. Maloney, 120–21). Collection II, Homily 15.33 (ed. Do 86 ¨rries, 303; trans. Maloney, 231). Collection II, 46.4 (ed. Do 87 For example: “Evagrius established the categories [of eastern Christian spirituality]; Macarius . . . provided the affective content”; Desprez, “Macaire,” DSp 10 (Paris, 1980), 39. 88 See above, note 65. For a handy (if slightly dated) sketch of the Evagrian inheritance, see Bamberger, The Praktikos and the Chapters on Prayer, xlviii–lix. 89 De malignis cogitationibus, 24 PG 79:1228C.

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God, full of variety’; [and] the temple of God is he who beholds the sacred unity, while the altar of God is the contemplation of the Holy Trinity.” 90 And, in the following from Epistle 39, there are echoes of the theophany at Sinai and the angelic liturgy: “If . . . by the grace of God the intellect both turns away from [the passions] and puts off the old man, then it will as well see its own constitution at the time of prayer like a sapphire or in the color of heaven, which also recalls what the scriptures call ‘the place [to´ po"] of God,’ seen by the elders on Mount Sinai. . . . For another heaven is imprinted upon the heart, the vision of which is both light and the spiritual place . . . within one beholds the meaning of beings and the holy angels.” 91 Here Evagrios takes up and interiorizes the theophany at Sinai in exactly the same way that Macarius dealt with Ezekiel’s chariot throne.92 For both, this interiorization of the throne of heaven includes the angelic liturgy. The ascent to heaven of the ancient apocalypses is thus identified with entry into the sanctuary of the purified intellect or heart. CONCLUSION Now I can offer a provisional answer to Himmelfarb’s question concerning the medieval interpretation of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and begin to glimpse something of the monastic Sitz im Leben for that tenth- through fifteenth-century “flood” of manuscripts transmitting it that Robert Kraft noted. For the Byzantinist, this increase of interest in ancient literature must obviously be connected with the mystical renaissance of later Byzantium, so often and not without justice linked to Symeon the New Theologian and his disciples, which has been widely noted and repeated in the standard accounts of the era.93 With the qualification of that quality of interiorization which I have stressed is so characteristic of both Niketas and his master, as well as of their common sources in the earliest monastic literature, I suggest that Niketas could easily have read these much older texts as testimonies to the same experience of the light and liturgy of heaven that both he and especially Symeon claimed as their own. Certainly Symeon had insisted that he did no more than preach the teaching of “the Master and the Apostles that some have perverted.” 94 Is it not therefore reasonable to suppose that, in the old apocalypses, both he and his disciples, together with legions of other monks throughout the empire and its “commonwealth,” could have welcomed the witness of the “grandfathers,” the saints of Israel, who had seen and known beforehand the coming of the MesKephalaia Gnostica, 5.84, PO 28:213. Ep. 39; Frankenberg, Evagrius Ponticus, 593; cf. also “Supplementary Chapters,” 2, 4, and 25 (Frankenberg, 425, 427, and 449). 92 Thus N. Se´d on these passages as “la premie`re inte´riorisation [of the Exodus theophany] dont nous ayons une attestation ´ecrite,” in “La shekinta et ses amis,” 242. See also Bunge, “Nach dem Intellekt Leben?” 101–4, on Evagrios’ related idea of the nou'" as “feeding on the bread of angels,” a notion that I take as akin to the rabbinic phrase for eschatological beatitude, “feeding on the splendor of the Shekinah,” which in turn is based, precisely, on an exegesis of Exod. 24:10–11. For the rabbis, see Chernus, Rabbinic Mysticism, 75–6, on bBerakot, 17a. 93 See, e.g., J. M. Hussey, Church and Learning in the Byzantine Empire: 867–1185 (Oxford, 1937; repr. 1960), esp. 201–25; and R. Browning, The Byzantine Empire, rev. ed. (Washington, D.C., 1992), 141–42. 94 See Cat. Discourse 34, SC 113, lines 248–63; trans. de Catanzaro, 354. 90 91

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siah and the light of the Trinity? This is almost exactly the view, for example, stated three hundred years later in the opening paragraphs of Gregory Palamas’ Tome of the Holy Mountain.95 As for the ancient patriarchs’ and prophets’ accounts of the ascent to heaven and personal transformation, these appear clearly to have been read as testimonies to the transfiguration which, in Christ, begins even now within the Christian. With Christ, to repeat my citation above from Macarius, “everything is within,” and, on occasion, this was taken as meaning the accessibility and even vision of the divine Presence and the heavenly court. It is not difficult thus for me to imagine how a cultivated man like Niketas, who believed that the eschatological liturgy of the Lamb and the priesthood of the angels were present, equally, in the ordered offices of the monastery katholikon and in the person of the hallowed elder, bright and fragrant already with the presence of the age to come, could and might well in fact have approved the copying and reading of the old apocalypses by the monks of Stoudios. We are obliged to acknowledge that other abbots were so disposed, simply in order to explain the manuscripts that have come down to us. So why not Niketas? Some years ago Archbishop Basil Krivocheine wrote an article demonstrating the presence of motifs, vocabulary, and occasional passages from the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles—whose years of manuscript efflorescence, by the way, almost precisely match those of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha—in the writings of Symeon the New Theologian.96 The presence of the still older apocalypses is, I should think, also discernible in Symeon, though I know of no study that has pursued that line of inquiry. Given the manuscript traditions noted above and by Kraft, the renewed interest in the apocrypha of both the Old and New Testaments is clearly part of the same general phenomenon, the resurgence of interest in mystical texts and, more widely still, perhaps, in harmony with that overall renewal of enthusiasm for the recovery of Byzantium’s links with the distant past which appears in a more secular vein in such contemporaries of Niketas as, for example, the philosopher and courtier Michael Psellos.97 What were the sparks that set off the specifically religious side of that renaissance? How much did the translation 95 ´tiko" To´ mo", in, Filokali´a, 4:188–89; trans. Ware et al., 4:418–19. The passage is built See the Agiorei J on the explicit parallel between the prophets, who saw the Trinity then, and “those who have been purified through virtue” sufficiently in the present life to be vouchsafed the vision of the “mysteries” of the eschaton—the holy ascetic fathers, in other words, as the continuation of the prophetic line, i.e., of the “grandfathers.” On the “grandfathers” as also seers of the uncreated God in eastern asceticomystical literature, see J. S. Romanides, “Notes on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics,” GOTR 6.2 (1960–61): 186–205, and 9.2 (1963–64): 225–70, esp. 194–205 and 257–62. 96 B. Krivocheine, “ JO ajnuperh´ fano" qeo´ ": St. Symeon the New Theologian and Early Christian Popular Piety,” StP 2 (1957): 485–94. On the manuscript tradition for the Greek of the Apocryphal Acts, see the accounting prior to the English translation of each of the Acts in Schneemelcher, 2:104–6 (AAndrew); 156–59 (AJohn); 216–17 (APaul); 277–79 (APeter); 322–24 (AThomas). The manuscripts tend to cluster between the 10th and 15th centuries. The same holds for the three manuscripts of the related and remarkable 4thcentury Acts of Philip, two of which are Athonite; see F. Amsler, F. Bovon, and B. Bouvier, Actes de l’apoˆtre Philippe (Tumhout, Belgium, 1996), 23–25. More generally on the widespread, medieval Byzantine regard for the apocryphal acts, see F. Bovon, “Byzantine Witness for the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles,” in The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, ed. F. Bovon, A. G. Brock, and C. R. Matthews (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), 87–98. I thank Prof. Bovon for kindly sending an offprint of his article. 97 See Hussey, Church and Learning, 37–50 and 73–88, and Browning, Byzantine Empire, 138–41. We in fact owe much, perhaps everything, to Psellos and to a number of his students and contemporaries, e.g., John Italos (Hussey, ibid., 89–102), for the preservation of the texts of the later Neoplatonists.

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and arrival of Isaac of Nineveh’s corpus in the capital sometime during the tenth century contribute to it?98 Were there other stimuli, besides of course the older body of ascetical literature which had never vanished and which drew on the same sources? How much else, besides Isaac, came up to “the city” from that still largely Christian Palestine of earlier Umayyad and later Abbasid rule which has just lately begun to attract scholarly attention? And were there, perhaps, some impulses generated through contact with the empire’s Jewish population, of which we may have caught at least one or two hints in Niketas? There are many questions, but so far, at least to my knowledge, there are not many answers. There is also the matter of all those materials that remain extant in Church Slavic which it is most reasonable to suppose were translated from Greek at or around the time of Niketas and immediately thereafter.99 Could their subsequent disappearance in Greek be connected with the near loss of the New Theologian’s own corpus and the complete loss of the service that Niketas wrote in his honor? Between the latter’s time and the rise of Byzantine hesychasm there was a long period when the authorities of church and state looked with a very dim eye on the charismatic ascetic. Was it, perhaps, through association with the always potentially difficult figure of the holy man, or else, relatedly, as part of the same emphasis on “law and order” within church and empire which we find reflected in, for example, the great twelfth-century canonists, that what had before been tolerated or ignored as simply extracanonical became, in the eyes of authority, uncanonical and, even, heretical?100 Here, too, we would have a fourth-century precedent. The same Athanasian epistle cited above, which set out the bounds of the biblical canon and forcibly denounced other writings claiming like authority, was written, as Athanasios tells us, in order to shut the mouths of certain uppity ascetics, the Meletians, who had been giving the archbishop problems and whose “boasting” over the apocalypses he wishes to silence.101 How many bishops felt the same way in later Byzantium? Throughout this essay I have discussed the interiorization of the ascent to heaven and other motifs from Second Temple and early Christian apocalypses. The fact, however, that one also finds warnings in monastic literature, and condemnations, directed against taking the notions of visions and ascents literally, in an exterior sense, condemnations that begin in the fourth century and continue into the fourteenth and beyond, strongly suggests that a number of the brethren persisted in doing just that.102 For the See D. Miller, “Introduction,” The Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian (Boston, 1984), lxxiv–vii and lxxxv–xciv on Isaac’s rapid dissemination and translation. So far as I know, however, there is as yet no significant monograph on Isaac’s thought and influence, one of the many glaring lacunae in the scholarship on eastern Christianity. 99 See above, notes 12–13 and 47. 100 On the frigid attitudes of the authorities toward the charismatic holy man which are frequent in late Macedonian and Komnenian times, see K. Holl, Enthusiasmus und Bussgewalt beim griechischen Mo¨nchtum (Leipzig, 1898), esp. 291–301 on the 12th-century canonists; J. M. Hussey, Ascetics and Humanists in XIth Century Byzantium (London, 1960); J. Gouillard, “Quatre proce`s de mystique `a Byzance (vers 960–1143),” REB 36 (1978) 5–81; and P. Magdalino, “The Byzantine Holy Man in the Twelfth Century,” in The Byzantine Saint: Studies Supplementary to Sobornost, ed. S. Hackel (London, 1981), 51–66. 101 Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism, 332. 102 Evagrios makes a special and repeated point of warning against the manifestation of “forms” in prayer in De oratione, e.g., esp. De orat. 73: ooJdai´mone" . . . uJpoti´qentai ga` r aujtv' (⫽ tv' nv') do´ xan qeou' kai` schmatismo´ n tina, in Filokali´a, 1:183; trans. Ware et al., 1:64, “The demons . . . suggest to it an illusion of the Glory of 98

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latter, whom I take to have been mostly monks, the old imagery was not merely the clothing of the visio dei in symbolic forms—as interpreted in, for example, Dionysios the Areopagite103 —but rather actual descriptions of the heavenly realities as well as of a possible experience of the same. Here I think of Abba Silvanos’ ascent to the throne and standing “before the Glory” in the Apophthegmata, of the several heavenly journeys in the Historia Monachorum, of the descriptions of Symeon Stylites’ encounters in his Syriac vita, or, closer to Niketas’ own era, of several of the stories in Paul of Monemvasia’s Edifying Tales.104 I am sure that such stories are legion and particularly frequent in hagiography. Apocalyptic imagery continued to nourish popular imagination and devotion at the same time as it served the more exalted and refined masters of spiritual discourse.105 I conclude with an anecdote from a collection of twentieth-century Athonite sayings, vignettes, and spiritual talks.106 While this anthology features a number of contributions God in a form” (emphasis mine, trans. slightly altered). The point continues to be repeated, e.g., in Diadochos of Photiki’s Gnostic Chapters, 36 and 40, Dialog de Photice: Oeuvres spirituelle, ed. E. des Places, SC (Paris, 1966), 5 bis, pp. 105 and 107; and Dionysios Areopagita, Mystical Theology, 4, PG 3:1040D (Heil and Ritter, p. 148). Cf. above, note 59, on Pachomios’ visions, and notes 60–61 on polemic vs. chariot visions and Silvanus on seeing “the Glory,” together with Golitzin, “Forma lui dumnezeu,” in Mistagogia, 197–223 and 241–45 nn. 77–83. In the 14th century, see, e.g., Gregory of Sinai, “On Prayer,” 7, Filokadi´a, 4:84–8; trans. Ware et al., 4:271–76; and, relatedly, Gregory Palamas against visionary journeys “out of the body” in “On those who practice stillness,” 4–8, Filokali´a, 4:126–28; trans. Ware et al., 4:335–38. 103 See, e.g., Celestial Hierarchy, 2.5, PG 3:145B (Heil and Ritter, p. 16, lines 7–13), where Dionysios cites the strange forms of the angels in (not stated, but evidently) Ezek. 1 ff as a spur for his own composition; also Celestial Hierarchy, 4.3, PG 3:180C (22); Divine Names, 1.8, PG 3:645C (Corpus Dionysiacum, vol. 1, De Divinibus Nominibus, ed. B. M. Suchla [Berlin, New York, 1990], 132); 9.5, PG 3:912B–13B (Corpus Dionysiacum, vol. 2, ed. Heil and Ritter, 209–10); and Ep. 9.1, PG 3:1105BC (Heil and Ritter, pp. 196–97). Cf. also Romanides, “Notes on the Palamite Controversy,” as above, note 95. 104 See above, note 60, and for Symeon Stylites, see the Syriac Vita, 3 and 98–99 on the manifestation of angels, 41 for the appearance of Christ atop the angelic ladder, and 42–43 for Elijah’s brilliant form in the heavenly chariot; in R. Doran, The Lives of Symeon Stylites (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1992), pp. 105, 171–72, 125–26, and 126–27, respectively. In The Spiritually Edifying Tales of Paul, Bishop of Monembasia, ed. and trans. J. Wortley (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1996), note the frequent appearances of angels with faces “bright as the sun” or robed with splendor and light, as in “The Man Called to Account” (70); “The Man Who Made His Confession” (73); “The Child Who Had a Vision at His Baptism” (93); the angel consecrator of the Eucharist in “The Drunken Priest” (128); and a tour of heaven in “The Woman Who Died and Came Back to Life” (108–10), which greatly resembles the ancient apocalyptic tours of heaven and hell. On the latter, see M. Himmelfarb, “From Prophecy to Apocalypse: The Book of the Watchers and Tours of Heaven,” in Jewish Spirituality, vol. 1, From the Bible to the Middle Ages, ed. A. Green (New York, 1988), 145–70, esp. 146–48. 105 This essay has not dealt with what J. Collins refers to as “historical apocalypses,” especially those with no “otherworldly journey”: “Morphology of a Genre,” 13–14. A. Y. Collins also notes that the first Christian apocalypses tend not to be interested in the precise, future unrolling of history: “The Early Christian Apocalypses,” Semeia 14 (1979): 63–67. This early difference between Jews, identifying with their own land and polity, and early Christians, who “have here below no city which abides” (Heb. 13:14), no longer applies once Christianity acquires its own earthly turf in the Roman Empire of the 4th century. See P. J. Alexander, The Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition, ed. D. deF. Abrahamse (Berkeley, Calif., 1985), 13–60, with its account of the long line of Byzantine historical apocalypticism that begins late in the 4th century—about the right length of time, it seems, for the idea of the “Christian Empire” to sink into popular piety—and carries on to the end of the empire and beyond. This phenomenon, though, seems to derive more from piety specific to the Reichskirche (see, e.g., E. von Ivanka, Roma¨erreich und Gottesvolk [Freiburg-Munich, 1968] than from those earlier currents of faith and, indeed, mystical experience that I have been tracing. 106 The Living Witness of the Holy Mountain: Contemporary Voices from Mount Athos, trans with intro. and notes A. Golitzin (South Canaan, Pa., 1996).

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exactly along the lines of what we found in Niketas and his predecessors,107 there is also one story that rings so strongly and artlessly of the apocalyptic journey to heaven that I cannot help but believe it represents a genuine experience or at least the belief in such experiences. This story came from a famous contemporary ge´ rwn of the Holy Mountain, the late Father Paissios of Karyes (d. 1994), speaking about his own elder, Papa Tikhon the Russian of Kapsala (d. 1968). According to Father Paissios, the old man was a prodigious faster, prayed unceasingly, wept constantly, and engaged in frequent and numerous prostrations. All of these actions are not only traditional monastic practice, but also feature regularly in the ancient apocalypses as part of the preparation for visions.108 At the conclusion of Father Paissios’ narrative there is a little taste of “Christian merkavah” from the late twentieth century: “When Papa Tikhon celebrated the holy liturgy in the chapel of his hermitage, he would often interrupt himself at the moment of the Great Entrance during the Cherubimic Hymn . . . and, entering into ecstasy, would become a stranger to everything earthly. At the end of a half hour . . . he would take up the celebration again, very slowly. . . . When someone once asked him what had happened, he answered in his broken Greek: ‘Guardian angel take me up. Guardian angel take me back down.’ ‘And what did you see?’ the other persisted. ‘Angels, Archangels, Cherubim, Seraphim . . . heavenly choir . . . t’ousands, ten t’ousands.’” 109 Marquette University 107 See the talks and sermons of Archimandrite Aemilianos, ibid., 165–215, esp. “The Experience of the Transfiguration,” 194–215, and certain of the other fathers in the “Contemporary Athonite Paterikon,” 134– 57, esp. 148–57. 108 On fasting, at least temporary celibacy, prostrations, weeping, and constant prayer as features known in Second Temple Judaism and particularly associated with apocalyptic visionaries and continuing into the rabbinic-era merkavah texts, see S. P. Fraade, “Ascetical Aspects of Ancient Judaism,” in Jewish Spirituality, vol. 1, From the Bible to the Middle Ages, ed. A. Green (New York, 1988), pp. 253–88, esp. 261–69, 280 nn. 30–31, and 281 n. 33; M. D. Swartz, “‘Like the Ministering Angels’: Ritual and Purity in Early Jewish Mysticism,” Association for Jewish Studies Review 19 (1994): 135–67; and M. Himmelfarb, “Practices of Ascent in the Ancient Mediterranean World,” in Death, Ecstasy, and Otherworldly Journeys, 123–37. For earlier though related considerations on the Jewish roots of Christian asceticism, see A. Guillaumont, “A propos du ce´libat des Esse´niens” and “Monachisme et ´ethique Jude´o-Chre´tienne,” in Aux origines, 13–23 and 47–58, respectively. 109 Living Witness, 142. See also the story of “Father Augustine the Russian,” ibid., 140–41, with his daily experience of “the uncreated light” and deathbed scene reminiscent of Abba Sisoes (PG 65:396BC).

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Was There Life beyond the Life Beyond? Byzantine Ideas on Reincarnation and Final Restoration ALEXANDER ALEXAKIS

n this paper I discuss several views on reincarnation that were considered beyond the accepted boundaries of Orthodox belief and trace the possible historical trajectory of these non-Orthodox views before and through the period from the eighth to the fifteenth century. My extensive research of the existing bibliography has led me to conclude that the subject has remained unexplored until now, and I therefore ask the readers’ indulgence for a report that is more preliminary than conclusive.1 Byzantine—that is, Orthodox Christian—eschatology was clear on the subject of life after death, leaving virtually no ground for misunderstanding. As the Nicaean-

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ˇevcˇenko, Dr. V. Kountoumas, and Dr. S. Ramphos for their advice and help. I wish to thank Prof. I. S Thanks are also due to Dr. Susan Wessel for her constructive criticism and her editorial work on this paper. I also wish to thank the two anonymous readers whose numerous comments and corrections have contributed enormously to the final shape of the article. I am responsible for any inaccuracies, mistakes, or shortcomings. It is appropriate to add here a strong caveat. Readers will easily realize that the issue of reincarnation is difficult to handle in Byzantium. The reason for this lies mainly in the pattern of chronological distribution of the primary sources. As is apparent, the sources before the 8th century are numerous. This abundance, however, wanes in the period between the 8th and 15th centuries, whose sources provide only random references to reincarnation. Moreover, these references appear in heresiological works dealing with religious movements that were in most cases marginal to the mainstream of Byzantine religious beliefs and practices. The image these sources offer is a distant one, an image very difficult to verify. As a result, the distinction between the idea of reincarnation in Byzantium and the idea the Byzantines had about the religious movements to which they attributed the idea of reincarnation is at times lost. In view of all this I must warn the reader that the attribution of the idea of reincarnation to heretical groups, such as the Bogomils, Paulicians, and Phoundagiagites, remains always tenuous. In some cases I only hope to have offered additional arguments supporting this assumption. The article must be read with the constant awareness that the heresiological stereotypes introduced by Epiphanios of Salamis in his Panarion have influenced almost all subsequent Byzantine literature on the issue of reincarnation. 1 For general introductory information on the transmigration of souls or reincarnation, see among others the entries: “Me´tempsychose,” DTC 10.2:1574–95; “Transmigration of Souls,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, 14: 257; “Metemyu´ cwsi",” Qrhskeutikh` kai` hjqikh` ejgkuklopaidei´a 8:1073–75. For the same topic in Byzantium see also H. Beck, Vorsehung und Vorherbestimmung in der theologischen Literatur der Byzantiner, OCA 114 (Rome, 1937); G. Podskalsky, Byzantinische Reichseschatologie. Die Periodisierung der Weltgeschichte in den vier Grossreichen (Daniel 2 und 7) und dem tausendja¨hrigen Friedensreiche (Apok. 20). Eine motivgeschichtliche Untersuchung, Mu ¨ nchener Universita¨ts-Schriften, Reihe der Philosophischen Fakulta¨t 9 (Munich, 1972). For the concept of soul in Byzantium, see “Soul”, ODB 3:1931–32, with bibliography. Further bibliography on reincarnation is, unfortunately, of a popular nature.

156 BYZANTINE IDEAS ON REINCARNATION AND FINAL RESTORATION Constantinopolitan Creed explicitly states in its last clause: “We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the ages to come.” 2 Furthermore, John of Damascus, in his Sacra Parallela (in fact, the Parallela Rupefucaldiana in Migne’s edition) at the end of chapter 24 entitled “On the Time of Death” (Peri` w”ra" qana´ tou), states: “This is what I may say concerning the Netherworld, in which the souls of all are hosted until the time that God has determined. Then He will resurrect all, not by reincarnating the souls, but by resurrecting the very bodies, [a fact] which, if you are incredulous, o Greeks, because you see the [bodies] dissolved, you have to believe.” (PG 96:544C–D).3 That this passage originally comes from Hippolytos’ treatise De Universo4 shows that mainstream Christian beliefs on the issue were already established by early Christian times. Almost four centuries after John of Damascus, Orthodox Christians reconsidered the finer points of the Christian afterlife and officially condemned the transmigration of souls in the third anathema against John Italos. John was put on trial for heresy in 1082, and the anathemas proclaimed against him at this trial were incorporated into the Synodikon of Orthodoxy: “Those who prefer the folly of the so-called wisdom of the profane philosophers and follow their teachers and accept the migrations of human souls or that they are destroyed like the souls of the animals and return to nothingness and on account of this deny the resurrection, judgement, and final retribution of the acts of their lives, anathema.” 5 Nevertheless, the official Christian eschatological approach to the question “What happens to the soul after death” was rejected among certain nonmainstream Christians. Apart from their belief in the transmigration of souls, those Christians, generally speaking, had several additional serious points of disagreement with the one Catholic and Apostolic Church. In the following I investigate the beliefs of those dissenters along with the ideas of a few theologians who lived more or less in accordance with the tenets of mainstream Christianity on the issue of metempsychosis. I begin with some basic definitions. Transmigration of souls (metenswma´ twsi", metemyu´ cwsi", metaggismo` " yucw'n, or even paliggenesi´a6 in Greek) is an idea that presupposes cosmological and soteriological beliefs different from those espoused by Christianity. We usually associate these beliefs with eastern religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, with quasiChristian sects such as Gnosticism or Manichaeism, and also with ancient Greek philosophy (Platonism-Pythagoreanism) and its descendants (e.g., Neoplatonism).7 2 Prosdokw'men ajna´ stasin nekrw'n kai` zwh` n touˆ me´ llonto" aijw'no" . See G. L. Dossetti, Il simbolo di Nicea e di Costantinopoli (Rome, 1967), 250. 3 See CPG 8056.2 (2.2). The Greek text reads as follows: Ou»to" oJ peri` a” dou lo´ go", ejn v» aiJ yucai` pa´ ntwn kate´ contai me´ cri kairou', o’n oJ Qeo` " w”risen, ajna´ stasin to´ te pa´ ntwn poihso´ meno", ouj yuca` " metenswmatw'n, ajll⬘ aujta` ta` sw´ mata ajnistw'n, a’ lelume´ na oJrw'nte", eij ajpistei'te, ”Ellhne", ma´ qete mh` ajpistei'n. 4 See CPG 1898 for other editions of the extant fragments from this work attributed to Hippolytos. For genuineness and other issues, see CPG 1870. 5 For the case of John Italos see below, 172. For the Greek text of the Synodikon, see J. Gouillard, “Le Synodicon de l’Orthodoxie,” TM 2 (1967): 57–61. See also idem, “Le proce`s officiel de Jean l’Italien. Les Actes et leurs sous-entendues,” TM 9 (1981): 133–74, esp. 147, lines 202 ff. The translation here is quoted from L. Clucas, The Trial of John Italos and the Crisis of Intellectual Values in Byzantium in the Eleventh Century (Munich, 1981), 142 (note that Clucas’ translation corresponds to the Greek text of the Synodikon found in Gouillard, “Le Synodicon,” 57, lines 193–97; see also ibid., 61, lines 234–36). 6 This word, though, means basically the periodic recurrence of events in Stoicism (see also below, 158, and n. 13). 7 For a collection of primary sources referring to reincarnation translated into English, see Reincarnation, The Phoenix Fire Mystery: An East-West Dialogue on Death and Rebirth from the Worlds of Religion, Science, Psychology, Philosophy, Art, and Literature, and from Great Thinkers of the Past and Present, ed. J. Head and S. L. Cranston (New

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One major presupposition of this doctrine is the belief in the preexistence of the soul usually combined with a dualistic view of the world.8 Within the premise of the preexistence of souls, their fall is seen as an entry into the circle of birth and death and of subsequent reincarnations into different bodies. Depending on the flavor of the heresy (for Christians) or of the philosophical system, this trip through the ages can direct the souls from one human body to another. However, among the more pessimistic heresies the worst-case scenarios do not rule out reincarnation into the body of an animal, an insect, a fish or—even worse—into a plant.9 This rather prolonged trip through the centuries, which can last more than the conventional time span of Christian chronology,10 has two purposes in most heretical systems. Its first purpose is to allow the soul to remember the series of previous incarnations, recall the sins/mistakes committed in these lives, and pay for them.11 Repayment for past sins fulfills the second purpose of the circle of incarnations. The human who had regained memory of all previous incarnations and of past sins could effectively repay the debts, purge the soul, and disentangle him- or herself from the circle of birth and death. Remembrance of lives past, though, was not as predominant in most Christian heresies that accepted the transmigration of souls as was the notion of atonement. The Manichaeans, for instance, believed that humans should not eat flesh. If they did so, they were bound to return in the body of an animal (e.g., a cow or a pig) in order to suffer the same fate and to pay for the act of destroying an animate creature.12 York, 1977). This book is the successor to two earlier collections by the same editors entitled Reincarnation: An East-West Anthology (New York, 1961) and Reincarnation in World Thought (New York, 1967). 8 Dualistic view of the world in the Platonic/Neoplatonic sense, i.e., a concept of a visible world alien to the supreme God and (usually) created by an evil (lesser) God. See S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth, eds., The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3d ed. (Oxford, 1996), s.v. Gnosticism. References in primary sources can be found in Proklos’ Theologia Platonica; see D. Saffrey and L. G. Westerink, eds., Proclus. The´ologie platonicienne, 5 vols. (Paris, 1968–87), 3:18–19 and passim and also in Proklos’ Institutio theologica, passim. 9 Plato (cf. Phaedrus, 81e, 248a–249d; Timaeus, 42c, etc.) and later Plotinos (Enneades 3,4,2) maintained that after death the souls of men return to earth and even enter into the bodies of animals. However, the Neoplatonists Porphyrios, Iamblichos, and also Hierokles spoke of human souls transmigrating only to other human bodies. For Hierokles’ work De providentia et fato see the criticism of Photios in Bibliotheca, ed. R. Henry, Photius. Bibliothe`que, vol. 3 (Paris, 1962), cod. 214 (oJ plei'sto" d⬘ aujtv' kai` me´ ga" ajgw` n hJ tw'n ajnqrwpi´nwn yucw'n ejsti probioth` kai` metenswma´ twsi", to` n me` n ejx ajlo´ gwn zv´ wn h“ eij" a“loga metaggismo` n oujk ajnadeco´ meno", th` n de` ejx ajnqrw´ pwn eij" ajnqrw´ pou" metabolh` n spoudaiologou´ meno"). For Iamblichos see the scholium in the De natura hominis by Nemesios of Emesa: B. Einarson, Nemesius of Emesa, De natura hominis (in press), sec. 2, lines 595– 600 ( jIa´ mblico" de` . . . kat’ei«do" zv´ wn yuch'" ei«do" ei«nai le´ gei, h“goun ei“dh dia´ fora. ge´ graptai gou'n aujtv' mono´ biblon ejpi´grafon o”ti oujk ajp’ajnqrw´ pwn eij" zv'a a“loga oujde` ajpo` zv´ wn ajlo´ gwn eij" ajnqrw´ tou" aiJ metenswmatw´ sei" gi´nontai, ajll’ajpo` zv´ wn eij" zv'a kai` ajpo` ajnqrw´ pwn eij" ajnqrw´ pou"). Finally, for Porphyrios we have the witness of Augustine (De civitate Dei, 10, 30). See also W. Stettner, Die Seelenwanderung bei Griechen und Ro¨mern, Tu ¨ binger Beitra¨ge zur Altertumwissenschaft 22 (Stuttgart-Berlin, 1934), 72–80. For Christian heretics and Manichaeans, see below. 10 For example, according to the calculations of the Neoplatonist Porphyrios, the soul lived for ten thousand years. See A. R. Sodano, ed., In Platonis Timaeum commentaria (fragmenta), Porphyrii in Platonis Timaeum commentariorum fragmenta (Naples, 1964), 1.16,8. 11 Repaying for past actions is the inherent idea in the Hindu theory of karma (i.e., the moral law of cause and effect). Proponents of the karma law tend to find this principle behind such biblical passages as Gal. 6:7 o’ ga` r eja` n spei´rh a“nqrwpo", tou'to kai` qeri´sei (“for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap”) or Matt. 26:52: pa´ nte" ga` r oiJ labo´ nte" ma´ cairan ejn macai´rh ajpolou'ntai. See Head and Cranston, Reincarnation in World Thought, 16–17. I will not consider this topic here, since the Byzantine heretics who were concerned with this issue seem never to have developed any abstract theory on it. 12 See Epiphanios, Panarion (Adversus Haereses) (CPG 3745), ed. K. Holl. Epiphanius, Ancoratus und Panarion, 3 vols. GCS, 25, 31, 37 (Leipzig, 1915–33), 3:29: to` n ejsqi´onta sa´ rka" yuch´ n fasin (sc. Manicheans) ejsqi´ein

158 BYZANTINE IDEAS ON REINCARNATION AND FINAL RESTORATION The final goal of the journey is for the soul to regain its pristine status of union with God. In this context, the “final restoration” has a somewhat different meaning from that assigned to it by mainstream Christianity. Final restoration is understood by these nonOrthodox Christians as the final event of the process of reincarnation and means something like the release of humans from the circle of successive incarnations. Viewed on a massive scale, the aggregate of these “individual escapes” from the circle of life and death eventually gives final restoration its broader meaning. This is the end of an era (that, depending on the philosophical/religious system, may have lasted tens of thousands of years) or, to put it in Stoic and Neopythagorean terms, the return of humanity to the Great Year or the Golden Age.13 But this final restoration is further understood in these systems as both an end of one era and a beginning of another. This process can continue ad infinitum and amounts to what the ancient Greek Orphics, Plato, or the Neoplatonists called the “eternal return” or the cyclical theory of the world’s history.14 To all these belief systems Christianity opposed and opposes the Incarnation of Christ, which was an hapax gegonos (a”pax gegono´ "). In Christ the union of humanity with deity is ineffably achieved once and forever.15 In the post-seventh-century Byzantine Empire, mainstream Orthodox Christians almost unanimously rejected all the tenets that I briefly presented above.16 Save for a few cases that I have been able to locate, the acceptance of the final clause of the NicaeanConstantinopolitan Creed was undisputed. Those who continued to profess the transmigration of souls and final restoration were either members of one of the few dualist heresies that persisted after the seventh century or were certain highly educated intellectuals whose interest in cultivating philosophy had led them to rediscover Platonism or Neoplato` n toiou'ton, kai` ei«nai aujto` n e“nocon tou' kai` aujto` n toiou'to´ ti gene´ sqai, wJ" eij e“fage coi'ron, coi'ron au«qi" gene´ sqai h‘ tau'ron h‘ o“rneon h“ ti tw'n ejdwdi´mwn ktisma´ twn. dio` ejmyu´ cwn ouj mete´ cousin oiJ toiou'toi. 13 See, for example, the statement of Sextus Empiricus in his Adversus mathematicos, ed. H. Mutschmann and J. Mau, Sexti Empirici opera, vol. 3, 2d ed., Teubner (Leipzig, 1961), 162 (ejpeidh` oJ aujto` " tw'n ajste´ rwn schmatismo` " dia` makrw'n, w”" fasi, cro´ nwn qewrei'tai, ajpokatasta´ sew" ginome´ nh" tou' mega´ lou ejniautou' di’ ejnneakiscili´wn ejnnakosi´wn kai` eJbdomh´ konta kai` eJpta` ejtw'n). As is evident for Sextus, the “Great Year” comes every 9,977 years. 14 On this topic see the standard work by M. Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, or Cosmos and History, trans. W. R. Trask (New York, 1991), 87–88. For Plotinos’ view see the Enneads, trans. S. MacKenna, The Enneads: A New, Definitive Edition with Comparisons to Other Translations on Hundreds of Key Passages (New York, 1992), 5.7.1–3. Each Period is “a periodical renovation bounding the boundlessness by the return of a former series. . . . The entire soul-period conveys with it all the requisite Reason-Principles, and so too the same existents appear once more under their action. . . . May we not take it that there may be identical reproduction from one Period to another but not in the same Period? . . . Thus when the universe has reached its end, there will be a fresh beginning, since the entire Quantity which the Kosmos is to exhibit, every item that is to emerge in its course, all is laid up from the first in the Being that contains the Reason-Principles. . . . As in Soul so in Divine Mind there is this infinitude of recurring generative powers; the Beings there are unfailing.” 15 See, among others, J. Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, 2d ed. (New York, 1983), 218–23. See also the modern Orthodox Christian position, based on the works of the Byzantine theologian Nicholas Kabasilas (d. 1361), by P. Nellas, Le vivant divinise´ (Greek title: Zw'on Qeou´ menon, Athens, 1981), trans. J.-L. Palierne (Paris, 1989), 88–91. 16 What unanimous means, though, is debatable; we do not know how many heretics existed at a given time, and I have not investigated the idea of metempsychosis on the level of popular beliefs. Unfortunately, there seems to be nothing on the subject in Ph. Koukoules’ monumental compilation Buzantinw'n Bi´o" kai` Politismo´ ", 6 vols. (Athens, 1948–57).

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tonism. To the average Byzantine, however, philosophers were simply another category of heretics,17 which brings us to the next issue. THE BACKGROUND TO AND EARLY BYZANTINE NOTIONS ABOUT REINCARNATION Philosophical (Hellenic) Origins It has already been noted that ideas of the transmigration of souls and the final restoration follow two rather distinct ideological lines.18 According to the classification of Epiphanios of Salamis, the first line runs through the Hellenic (ajpo` E J llh´ nwn) heresies, which 19 inherited the tenets of ancient Greek philosophy. The second line, which follows the path of Gnosticism, began farther east in India and Persia and goes back to Hinduism/ Buddhism and Zoroastrianism.20 I note in passing that even though both these lines claim to trace their origins to India, the actual route is somewhat complex and the sources that transmit this information are not completely reliable. To be more precise, some authors21 attribute Platonic or generally Greek ideas of the transmigration of souls to Egyptian influence.22 Plato was not the first to introduce this notion among the Greeks. 17 Certainly not all Byzantines shared this view. Since many Byzantine theologians and literati had also composed philosophical works, one has to keep in mind that Byzantine scholars at least did not entertain this simplistic approach. For a discussion of the problem along with a wider consideration of the relationship between philosophy and theology, see M. Cacouros’ entry in A. Jacob, gen. ed., Encyclope´die philosophique universelle, vol. 4, ed. J.-F. Mattei, Le discours philosophique (Paris, 1998), 1362–84, esp. 1368–69, “Le statut des gens qui ont ‘philosophe´’ `a Byzance.” 18 Note, however, that this distinction (adopted here for reasons of convenience) is a rather artificial one. In reality these two lines overlap. In fact, Gnosticism and the line of heresies that descend from it borrow much from Plato, especially his perception of this world as an inferior one in which the souls are caught on a wheel of ongoing rebirth. For a more thorough analysis of these relationships and ramifications, see Y. Stoyanov, The Hidden Tradition in Europe (London-New York, 1994). 19 See Epiphanios, Panarion, ed. Holl, 1:165, 183–86. 20 Intellectual affinities and lines of transmission of dogmas and religious ideas are complicated matters, and the suggestions submitted here are only hypotheses based on existing Byzantine sources. For an anthology of texts related to reincarnation in these religions (Hinduism, etc.), see Head and Cranston, Reincarnation in World Thought, 33–148. For a more refined classification of the heretical ramifications, based on the rather broad understanding of the term heresy by Epiphanios (which I more or less follow), see A. Pourkier, L’he´re´siologie chez Epiphane de Salamine (Paris, 1992), 85–91 and 95–114. On the term heresy, see also E. Moutsoulas, “Der Begriff ‘Ha¨resie’ bei Epiphanios von Salamis,” in StP 8, TU 93 (Berlin, 1966), 86–107; C. Riggi, “Il termine ‘hairesis’ nell’accezione di Epifanio di Salamina (Panarion t. I; De Fide),” Salesianum 29 (1967): 3–27; and G. Valle´e, A Study in Anti-Gnostic Polemics, Irenaeus, Hippolytos and Epiphanios (Waterloo, Can., 1981), 75–79. 21 See Eusebios, Praeparatio Evangelica (CPG 3486), ed. K. Mras, Eusebius Werke VIII, Die Praeparatio evangelica, GCS 43.2 (Berlin, 1956), bk. 10, chap. 4, sec. 20, lines 1–3: Pla´ twn . . . le´ getai . . . ajpa'rai eij" Ai“gupton kai` th' tou´ twn filosofi´a plei'ston ajnaqei'nai cro´ non, combined with Clement of Alexandria, Stromata (CPG 1377), ed. O. Sta¨hlin and L. Fru ¨ chtel, Clemens Alexandrinus II, Stromata I–VI, GCS 52 (15) (Berlin, 1960), 6.4, 35.1: Eu”roimen d⬘ a‘n kai` a“llo martu´ rion eij" bebai´wsin tou' ta` ka´ llista tw'n dogma´ twn tou` " ajri´stou" tw'n filoso´ fwn par⬘ hJmw'n sfeterisame´ nou" wJ" i“dia aujcei'n to` kai` para` tw'n a“llwn barba´ rwn ajphnqi´sqai tw'n eij" eJka´ sthn ai”resin sunteino´ ntwn tina´ , ma´ lista de` Aijgupti´wn ta´ te a“lla kai` to` peri` th` n metenswma´ twsin th'" yuch'" do´ gma. The first to assign Egyptian origin to this idea was Herodotos (2.123) who speaks about the belief of the Egyptians that: Prw'toi de` kai` to´ nde to` n lo´ gon Aijgu´ ptioi´ eijsi oiJ eijpo´ nte", wJ" ajnqrw´ pou yuch` ajqa´ nato´ " ejsti, tou' sw´ mato" de` katafqi´nonto" ej" a“llo zv'on aijei` gino´ menon ejsdu´ etai. ejpea` n de` pa´ nta perie´ lqh ta` cersai'a kai` ta` qala´ ssia kai` ta` peteina´ , au«ti" ej" ajnqrw´ pou sw'ma gino´ menon ejsdu´ nei . . . then he adds that: tou´ tv tv' lo´ gv eijsi` oi’ JEllh´ nwn ejcrh´ santo, oiJ me` n pro´ teron oiJ de` u”steron, wJ" ijdi´v eJwutw'n ejo´ nti. 22 That this belief had no basis in reality is to most scholars an accepted fact. The Egyptians never had a doctrine of reincarnation. Cf. H. Bonnet, in Reallexikon des ¨agyptischen Religionsgeschichte (Berlin, 1952), 76ff.

160 BYZANTINE IDEAS ON REINCARNATION AND FINAL RESTORATION Before him Pythagoras had already taught these ideas along with a number of related topics. Pythagoras’ sojourn in Egypt is attested by a number of authors including Clement of Alexandria, who in his Stromata states that Pythagoras was a student of Sonchis the Egyptian archprophet.23 In any case, the notion that the transmigration of souls originated in Egypt is a rather familiar idea among early Byzantine writers. Later authors like George the Monk and Nikephoros Gregoras simply reproduced the information concerning Plato’s and Pythagoras’ visits to Egypt but skipped the part about the transmigration of souls.24 The missing link between Egypt and India is found in Philostratos’ Life of Apollonios of Tyana. In the sixth book, Flavios Philostratos describes how Pythagoras decided to abstain from eating meat: “but these men . . . whet their knife against her (i.e., earth’s) children (i.e., animals) in order to get themselves dress and food. Here then is something which the Brahmans of India themselves did not approve of, and which they taught the naked sages of Egypt also not to approve; and from them Pythagoras took his rule of life and he was the first of Hellenes who had intercourse with the Egyptians. And it was his rule to give up and leave her animals to the earth.” 25 In another passage Philostratos presented Apollonios arguing with the Egyptian Gymnosophists on the superiority of the Indian wisdom over that of the Egyptians. His opinion was that the Egyptians had based their religious innovations on Indian philosophy.26 Certainly the Life of Apollonios of Tyana is not a reliable source, a problem shared, I am afraid, with many of the sources that bear witness to the ideas being examined here.27 Despite their unreliability, the availA plausible explanation of this issue is found in W. Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism, trans. E. L. Minar, Jr. (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), 128: “Greeks in Egypt connected beliefs about the afterlife and religious customs with the name of Pythagoras in the same way as Greeks living in the area about the Hellespont and the Black Sea did with the beliefs of the Getae about immortality. . . . The difference is that in the latter case the Greeks’ feeling of superiority to the barbarians led them to make Zalmoxis the pupil of Pythagoras, while in Egypt their awe of the ancient foreign culture produced an opposite result, and Pythagoras became the pupil of the Egyptians.” 23 See Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.15, 69.1: JIstorei'tai de` Puqago´ ra" me` n Sw´ gcidi tv' Aijgupti´v ajrciprofh´ th maqhteu'sai (see, however, the previous note for the validity of this statement). 24 See George the Monk, Chronikon, ed. C. de Boor, Georgii monachi Chronicon, Teubner (Leipzig, 1904; repr. Stuttgart, 1978 [1st ed. corr. P. Wirth]), 76; Nikephoros Gregoras, Historia romana, ed. L. Schopen and I. Bekker, Nicephori Gregorae historiae Byzantinae, vol. 1, CSHB (Bonn, 1829), 323. 25 See F. C. Conybeare, Philostratus, The Life of Apollonius of Tyana (Cambridge, Mass.-London, 1989), 2:302–4: oiJ de´ . . . ma´ cairan ejp⬘ aujta` e“qhxan uJpe` r ejsqh'to´ " te kai` brw´ sew". jIndoi` toi´nun Bracma'ne" aujtoi´ te oujk ejph´ noun tau'ta kai` tou` " Gumnou` " Aijgupti´wn ejdi´daskon mh` ejpainei'n aujta´ ⭈ e“nqen Puqago´ ra" eJlw´ n, JEllh´ nwn de` prw'to" ejpe´ mixen Aijgupti´oi", ta` me` n e“myuca th' gh' ajnh'ken.” 26 Ibid., 44–50. 27 The nature of the topic itself, which more or less transcends empirical reality, poses a major problem to scholarly investigation. Furthermore, both heretics and their opponents were consciously striving to present in their writings an image that distorted existing reality either positively or negatively. See, for example, the remark of E. de Faye concerning Gnosticism, in Gnostiques et Gnosticisme, ´etude critique des documents du Gnosticisme chre´tien aux IIe et IIIe sie`cles (Paris, 1925), 496 “si le christianisme a vaincu le gnosticisme, il n’a pu le faire qu’en se chargeant des de´pouilles de son adversaire.” In this respect, it is not by accident that the same author has subtitled the fourth part of his book (ibid., 335–437) “Les Gnostiques des he´re´siologues.” Finally, for Epiphanios, his predecessors, and the development of heresiological polemics, see Pourkier, L’he´r´esiologie chez Epiphane, 485–97. For another instance of misrepresenting reality (in this case, Peter of Sicily’s writings about the Paulicians), see N. Garsoı¨an, “Byzantine Heresy: A Reinterpretation,” DOP 25 (1971): 87–113.

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able sources may lead one to believe that both the philosophical/Greek and the Gnostic (mostly Manichaean) notions of the transmigration of souls that we encounter in Byzantium can possibly be traced to India.28 That said, I now examine the two lines of reincarnational eschatology indicated so far. In order to trace the development of these ideas, I focus mainly on a period prior to the eighth century. Most of the reincarnational philosophies and sects were established and flourished during the first four centuries of the Christian era. As early as the second half of the fourth century, Epiphanios of Salamis included these heresies in his Panarion adversus Haereses, which he completed some time before 378.29 Part of what he described in this manual of heresiology was, nonetheless, facing extinction by the beginning of the fifth century. Still, the information culled and arranged in a systematic way by Epiphanios30 remains what one can find—mostly in abridged form—in later ecclesiastical authors, such as John of Damascus or Germanos of Constantinople. Even much later authors such as Photios or Euthymios Zigabenos based their work on those early writings of Epiphanios and other heresiologists of that period such as Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Irenaeus.31 Needless to say, however, Epiphanios is not the only primary source that is used in the present study. According to the Suda, the Syrian (i.e., from the island of Syra) Pherekydes of Babys (6th century B.C. fl. ca. 544) was the first to teach the idea of the transmigration of souls in Greece.32 Pythagoras, his contemporary and alleged student, was the one who expounded this doctrine in a more detailed fashion.33 In particular, Pythagoras put much emphasis on dietary restrictions, which helped the soul avoid further reincarnations, and 28 For the position of modern scholarship on the issue, which exactly traces the roots of reincarnation back to India, see Burkert, Lore and Science, 133 and n. 71 for further bibliography. 29 Pourkier, L’he´re´siologie chez Epiphane, 51. 30 For the heresiological work of Epiphanios and his system, see ibid., 76–114. 31 Except for Epiphanios of Salamis, the list of early authors of lists of heresies or antiheretical treatises includes Hippolytos of Rome, Refutatio omnium haeresium (Philosophoumena) (CPG 1899), ed. M. Marcovich, Patristische Texte und Studien 25 (Berlin, 1986), 53–417; and Irenaeus of Lyon, Adversus Haereses (for editions of the preserved parts of this work, in Latin, see CPG 1306). For these and other predecessors, see Pourkier, L’he´re´siologie chez Epiphane, 53–75. Later heresiologists include Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Graecarum affectionum curatio (CPG 6210), ed. P. Canivet, The´odoret de Cyr. The´rapeutique des maladies helle´niques, 2 vols., SC 57 (Paris, 1958); John of Damascus, De haeresibus (CPG 8044), ed. B. Kotter, Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, vol. 4, Patristische Texte und Studien 22 (Berlin, 1981), 19–67. Germanos of Constantinople, De haeresibus et synodis (CPG 8020), PG 98:40–88. Many references to heresies and heretics are found in Photios’ Bibliotheca. For Euthymios Zigabenos’ Panoplia, see PG 130:20ff. For bibliography on Epiphanios’ predecessors, see Pourkier, L’he´re´siologie chez Epiphane, 503–4. 32 See A. Adler, ed., Suidae Lexicon, Lexicographi Graeci, vol. 1.4 Teubner (Leipzig, 1935), 713. For more on Pherecydes, see M.-O. Goulet-Gaze´, ed., Dioge`ne Lae¨rce. Vies et Doctrines des philosophes illustres, trans. and comm. J.-F. Balaude´ et al. (Paris, 1999), 940 n. 9, with bibliography. 33 See, e.g., Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philosophorum, ed. H. S. Long, Diogenis Laertii vitae philosophorum, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1964; repr. 1966), 8.4–5. According to recent research, however, it was Plato and his school that shaped this understanding of Pythagorean philosophy. Much of the material concerning Pythagoras’ ideas on the transmigration of souls also comes from later authors. It seems that what is credited to Pythagoras is of Orphic origins, and, certainly, no association of Pythagoras with Egypt is recorded by any author before Hellenistic times. In any case, paternity or, at least, espousal of the belief in reincarnation by Pythagoras has not been disputed. On this issue see W. Rathmann, Quaestiones Pythagoreae Orphicae Empedocleae (Halis Saxonum [Germany], 1933), 3–10, 59–73, and Burkert, Lore and Science, 120.

162 BYZANTINE IDEAS ON REINCARNATION AND FINAL RESTORATION stressed enormously the significance of memory of past lives.34 It is even said that he was able to recall a number of his previous incarnations.35 Another Pythagorean, Empedokles himself, seems to have retained memories from past lives.36 On the other hand, the idea that the souls should purify themselves and gradually rise to higher and higher levels of human existence is present in the writings of Empedokles and Pindar. In a passage preserved in Plato’s Menon (81b–c; also cf. Phaedrus 249a–c), Pindar states that “the souls of those, who have repaid for old sins, give life in their last incarnation to three kinds of “godly people”: kings, victorious athletes, and wise men.” After their death their noble souls will be honored as heroes.37 Empedokles’ and Pindar’s ideas remained rather unknown to the Byzantine heresiologists. Epiphanios of Salamis and his followers (John of Damascus, Suda, etc.) singled out for consideration the Pythagoreans, the Stoics, and the Platonists. Their belief in the transmigration of souls figures prominently among the rather short lists of major errors that Epiphanios provides in order to characterize their identity.38 That a few of these philosophical systems exerted some influence until the final demise of Greek paganism in sixth-century Byzantium is beyond doubt. The Pythagoreans and the Stoics had possibly ceased to exist by then, but the Neoplatonists were still active (without, however, calling themselves “neo”).39 One or two early Christian fathers were beguiled by the reincarnation theory and tried to integrate it into their theological treatment of human nature. Clement of Alexandria in his Hypotyposeis seems to have embraced the idea of reincarnation.40 The work has been lost, and we only know of its pro-incarnational tenor from a statement in codex 109 of the Bibliotheca of Photios.41 Given Clement’s contacts with and possible influSee J. P. Vernant, Mu´ qo" kai` ske´ yh sth` n ajrcai´a JElla´ da, trans. S. Georgoudi (Thessalonike, n.d.), 104–5, and also A. Cameron, “The Pythagorean Background of the Theory of Recollection” (Ph.D diss., Columbia University, 1938). 35 Burkert, Lore and Science, 138–41. 36 This is the understanding of a passage from his Katharmoi preserved by Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philosophorum, 8.77: h“dh ga´ r pot’ ejgw` geno´ mhn kou'ro´ " te ko´ rh te / qa´ mno" t∆ oijwno´ " te kai` e“xalo" e“mpuro" ijcqu´ " . For further discussion see Stettner, “Seelenwanderung,” 28–29, and Burkert, Lore and Science, 133. 37 Le´ gei de` kai` Pi´ndaro" kai` a“lloi polloi` tw'n poihtw'n o”soi qei'oi´ eijsin . . . fasi` ga` r th` n yuch` n tou' ajnqrw´ pou ei«nai ajqa´ naton, kai` tote` me` n teleuta'n —o’ dh` ajpoqnh´ skein kalou'si—tote` de` pa´ lin gi´gnesqai, ajpo´ llusqai d’ oujde´ pote⭈ dei'n dh` dia` tau'ta wJ" oJsiw´ tata diabiw'nai to` n bi´on⭈ oi»si ga` r a‘n—Fersefo´ na poina` n palaiou' pe´ nqeo" / de´ xetai, eij" to` n u”perqen a”lion kei´nwn ejna´ tv e“tei¨ / ajndidoi' yuca` " pa´ lin, / ejk ta'n basilh'e" ajgauoi` / kai` sqe´ nei kraipnoi` sofi´a te me´ gistoi / a“ndre" au“xont’, ej" de` to` n loipo` n cro´ non h”rwe" aJgnoi` / pro` " ajnqrw´ twn kaleu'ntai. For the transmigration of souls in Pindar, see Stettner, “Seelenwanderung,” 27–28. For this particular passage, which probably comes from Pindar’s Threnoi (ed. H. Maehler [post B. Snell], Pindari carmina cum fragmentis, pt. 2, 4th ed., Teubner [Leipzig, 1975], frag. 133) and is cited by Plato, see some related discussion in the context of Plato’s Phaedrus in Menon, trans. and comm. M. Canto-Sperber (Paris, 1991), 253–57. 38 See Epiphanios, Panarion, ed. Holl, 1:183, 185–86 and also the spurious Anacephalaeosis attributed to Epiphanios, ibid., 165. This Anacephalaeosis is repeated by John of Damascus in his De haeresibus, ed. Kotter, 4:21–22. 39 In fact, after the 3rd century A.D. Porphyry and Iamblichos incorporated much of the Pythagorean ideas and myths into their Neoplatonism: it is no accident that each one of these two Neoplatonists composed a Life of Pythagoras. 40 Only fragments exist from this work (CPG 1380), ed. O. Sta¨hlin, L. Fru ¨ chtel, and L. Treu, Clemens Alexandrinus, vol. 3, Stromata Buch VII und VIII. Excerpta ex Theodoto, Eclogae propheticae, Quis diues saluetur, Fragmente, GCS 17.2 (Berlin, 1970), 195–202. 41 R. Henry, ed., Photius. Bibliothe`que, vol. 2 (Paris, 1960), 79–80 (metemyucw´ sei" kai` pollou` " pro` tou Ada j `m ko´ smou" terateu´ etai). 34

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ences from Gnosticism and Neopythagoreanism, it is difficult to disprove Photios’ pronouncement.42 However, it was Origen who paid dearly for his belief in the preexistence of souls and for his failure to clearly reject reincarnation in one of his early works (De principiis).43 Although in other works (Against Celsus)44 he rejected metempsychosis both explicitly and implicitly, his assumptions on the preexistence of souls made him suspect in the eyes of Orthodox Christians. Later Christians presumed that belief in the preexistence of souls automatically implied belief in reincarnation (see below for Gregory of Nyssa), which was, of course, unacceptable to mainstream Christians. The Fifth Ecumenical Council in 553 condemned Origen on a number of charges related to those ideas.45 Later George the Monk in his Chronikon gave the following account: “And the Fifth Ecumenical Council convened . . . against Origen, and those who followed him in his impious dogmas, Didymos and Evagrios (who flourished in the days of old) and [against] their (his in the Greek text) writings, in which they frivolously said that the souls existed before the bodies, [and in which they] believed—taking their hint from Greek dogmas—in the transmigration of souls, and that hell would come to an end.” 46 Even Gregory of Nyssa, who admired the learning and allegorical skill of Origen, did not fail to object to the doctrine of the preexistence of souls. “This book,” Gregory said, writing about the De principiis, was not “clear of the influence of the theories of the Greeks, which they held on the subject of successive incorporations” of the soul. In fact, this remark of Gregory of Nyssa is part of a longer refutation that constitutes chapter 28 of his De opificio Dominis and is directed against “those who say the souls exist prior to the bodies.” 47 It must be stressed, however, that Origen’s anathematization was the final result For Clement’s relations to Gnosticism and Greek philosophy in general, see S. R. C. Lilla, Clement of Alexandria: A Study in Christian Platonism and Gnosticism (London, 1971), esp. 118ff. 43 For this work, see CPG 1482, where all editions are listed. The French edition of the existing fragments with detailed commentary is most useful. The first ambiguous passage (preserved only in Latin) is the concluding paragraph of bk. 1, chap. 8; see H. Crouzel and M. Simonetti, eds., Orige`ne. Traite´ des Principes, 3 vols., SC 252, 253, 268 (Paris, 1978–80), 1:223. For a detailed commentary on this passage, see ibid., 2:119– 25. Both the text and the commentary clearly show that Origen condemned reincarnation. However, another passage from the same work, (bk. 2, chap. 10.8; ibid., 1:393) was (wrongly) understood by Jerome as a defense of reincarnation. See also the commentary ibid., 2:240–41, with a discussion of the textual problems this passage presents. A third problematic passage is found in bk. 4, chap. 4.8 of the same work and was misunderstood by Jerome. Again Origen rejects reincarnation in it. For the text see ibid., 3:423, with com¨rgemanns and H. Karpp, mentary at 4:267. Also very useful is the edition and German translation by H. Go ¨cher von den Prinzipien (Darmstadt, 1976), 262–82, 436, 812. Origenes Vier Bu 44 Contra Celsum (CPG 1476), ed. H. Boret, Orige`ne. Contre Celse, vol. 1, SC 132 (Paris, 1967), 110 (1, 13, 18). 45 In fact, it was the Council of Constantinople in 532 that issued fifteen canons against Origen’s ideas. In 543 Justinian promulgated an edict against Origen, which concluded with nine anathemas. Anathema no. 1 was directed against the belief in the preexistence of souls. The Fifth Ecumenical Council reiterated many of the canons/anathemas of 532. See Canones xv contra Origenem (CPG 9352), ACO 4.1:248–49. 46 See George the Monk, Chronikon, ed. de Boor, 629: Pe´ mpth su´ nodo" ge´ gonen . . . kata` jWrige´ nou" kai` tw'n ta` ejkei´nou ajsebh' do´ gmata diadexame´ nwn Didu´ mou kai` Eujagri´ou tw'n pa´ lai ajkmasa´ ntwn kai` tw'n ejkteqe´ ntwn par’ aujtou' kefalai´wn, ejn oi»" ejlhrv´ doun prou¨ pa´ rcein ta` " yuca` " tw'n swma´ twn, ejx JEllhnikw'n oJrmw´ menoi dogma´ twn th` n metemyu´ cwsin doxa´ zonte", kai` te´ lo" ei«nai th'" kola´ sew", etc. 47 Gregory of Nyssa, De opificio hominis (CPG 3154), PG 44:229A: Pro` " tou` " le´ gonta" prou¨ festa´ nai ta` " yuca` " tw'n swma´ twn, h‘ to` e“mpalin pro` tw'n yucw'n diapepla'sqai ta` sw´ mata. jEn v» ti" kai` ajnatroph` th'" kata` ta` " metemyucw´ sei" muqopoii´a" . And ibid., 232A: OiJ . . . presbute´ ran th'" ejn sarki` zwh'" th` n politei´an tw'n yucw'n dogmati´zonte", ou“ moi dokou'si tw'n JEllhnikw'n kaqareu´ ein dogma´ twn, tw'n peri` th'" metenswmatw´ sew" aujtoi'" memuqologhme´ nwn. 42

164 BYZANTINE IDEAS ON REINCARNATION AND FINAL RESTORATION of a biased and one-sided anti-Origenist campaign that lasted for more than two centuries. At a certain point, during the period 393–402, this campaign was reinvigorated and further promoted by Epiphanios of Salamis.48 In addition to those who specifically wrote against heresies (Epiphanios, Irenaeus, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Eusebios, John of Damascus, etc.), the early fathers, in general, were openly hostile toward the transmigration of souls. When John Chrysostom, for example, compares Peter to Plato (in the Acts of the Apostles) the first critical remark he makes against Plato is “What benefit can I have from learning that the soul of a philosopher becomes a fly (sic)?” 49 Another example might be the account of Emperor Julian’s death in the Church History of Socrates. According to Socrates, Julian rejected the Persian king’s plea for peace on the grounds that he expected his campaign against Persia in 361 to be thoroughly victorious. It seems that Julian expected this victory because he was convinced that he was a reincarnation of Alexander the Great. As a result, Julian proceeded with his plans and was eventually killed before even coming into contact with the enemy. Socrates held that this “silly” belief in reincarnation had disastrous consequences not only for the emperor but also for the empire.50 In addition to these incidental criticisms against reincarnation, a full-fledged refutation of the ideas of the transmigration of souls appeared in Egypt (between 485 and 512/ 13 just a few years before Justinian’s antipagan legislation).51 The dialogue “Theophrastos, or on the Immortality of Souls and the Resurrection of Bodies” penned by Aeneas of Gaza summarizes all the Hellenic/Neoplatonic ideas about the transmigration of souls and defends the Christian positions.52 Axitheos, the Syrian Christian who responds to the major objections of his discussant, the philosopher Philotheos, presents a number of elaborate Christian responses to questions such as the following: “If we deny the preexistence of souls, how is it possible for the wicked to prosper and for the righteous ones to live in dire circumstances”? “How can one accept the fact that people are born blind or that some die immediately after they are born, while others reach a very old age”?

48 See J. F. Dechow, Dogma and Mysticism in Early Christianity: Epiphanios of Cyprus and the Legacy of Origen (Macon, Ga., 1988); and P. Heiman, Erwa¨ltes Schicksal, Pra¨existenz der Seele und christlicher Glaube im Denkmodel des Origenes (Tu ¨ bingen, 1988), 262ff. As late as the beginning of the 8th century, people thought they should still inveigh against Origen’s dogmas on final restoration; see F. Diekamp, Doctrina Patrum de Incarnatione Verbi. Ein griechisches Florilegium aus der Wende des 7. und 8. Jahrhunderts, 2d ed. corr. B. Phanourgakis, ed. E. Chrysos (Mu ¨ nster, 1981), 179–88. 49 See John Chrysostom, In Acta apostolorum homiliae 1–55 (CPG 4426), PG 60:48.8: Ti´ ga` r o“felo" ejk tou' maqei'n, o”ti mui'a hJ yuch` tou' filoso´ fou gi´netai; which is a possible (distorted?) allusion to Plato’s Phaedrus, 248e–249e. 50 See Socrates Scholastikos, Historia ecclesiastica (CPG 6028), ed. G. Ch. Hansen, Sokrates Kirchengeschichte, GCS, N.F. 1 (Berlin, 1995), 217. 51 ´ ne´e de Gaza: Proble`mes de chronologie,” For the date of this work see N. Aujoulat, “Le The´ophraste d’E KOINWNIA 10 (1986): 67–80. 52 See Aeneas Gazaeus, Theophrastus, sive de animarum immortalitate et corporum resurrectione dialogus (CPG 7450), PG 85:872–1005, and the more recent edition by M. E. Colonna, Theophrastus sive de immortalitate animae (Naples, 1958). For Aeneas’ relation to Neoplatonism (he was a student of the Neoplatonic philosopher Hierokles in Alexandria) and his attempt to formulate a Christian response to the Neoplatonic teaching of his era, see M. Wacht, Aeneas von Gaza als Apologet (Bonn, 1969).

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“If we believe that each new body comes with a new soul, then the souls are innumerable,” 53 and so on.

This dialogue was followed a few years later by the dialogue Ammonius by Zacharias of Mytilene, a far-reaching refutation of Neoplatonism in which the transmigration of souls is also rejected in passing.54 If this survey of the early pagan/Greek ideas of the transmigration of souls is close to complete, we should be correct in assuming that the post-sixth-century Byzantines had inherited very little from the pagan/Hellenic past on the issue of the transmigration of souls. The works of Aeneas of Gaza and Zacharias of Mytilene stand as witnesses to some latent attempts at survival on the part of Neoplatonism. And it was in some Eastern centers of the Byzantine Empire, such as Gaza, Beirut, and Alexandria, that the last Neoplatonist intellectuals were still debating with Christians about the transmigration of souls and other issues. Christians, however, aided a little later by the antipagan legislation of Justinian, brought about the demise of Neoplatonism. It is only in the works of Christian fathers such as Dionysios the Areopagite that major Neoplatonic tenets were incorporated into a Christian doctrine. The transmigration of souls, being a rather secondary issue, was simply lost as incompatible with the major Christian belief in the resurrection of the body. Few remnants of the proble´matique of Theophrastus and Ammonius seem to have surfaced in the seventh-century Quaestiones et responsiones of Anastasios of Sinai, showing that at least the questions that puzzled both Christians and pagans were, almost a century and a half later, still in the air. However, for the reasons I stated, reincarnation as a possible answer to these questions was by then not an option.55 Heretical Origins Epiphanios classifies a succession of heresies that are Christian by name but not Christian in their beliefs. The root of this line goes back to Simon Magus and forms the cluster of heresies known today under the imprecise term gnostic. Epiphanios arranges these heresies chronologically. The Gnostics in Epiphanios’ account figure in sixth place, while number seven is occupied by the Carpocratians. Number 22 (and 42 in the general list) in the same list corresponds to the Markionites, and the Manichaeans occupy the 46th (66th in the general list) place right after the followers of Paul of Samosata.56 53 The text presented here is a rather loose rendering of the meaning of the sentences found in Colonna, Theophrastus, 19: Qeo´ frasto"⭈ . . . All’ j eij pantelw'" to` n pro´ teron th'" yuch'" bi´on ajne´ loimen, ajtaxi´a dokei' to` gigno´ menon, eij kakoi` me` n eu« pra´ ttousin, ajtucou'sin d⬘ ajgaqoi´. 27–28: Qeo´ frasto"⭈ . . . All’ j ejkei'no" me´ n, hjdi´kei ga´ r, tw'n ojfqalmw'n ajfh´ rhtai, to` de` paidi´on a“rti tecqe´ n, eij mh` probebi´wken, oujde` proh´ marte, pw'" ga´ r; Po´ qen ou«n, eijpe´ moi, tw'n ojfqalmw'n hJ no´ so"; 40: Qeo´ frasto"⭈ . . . ’En de` hJma'" pare´ dramen, o”ti ta` " me` n a“lla" noera` " kai` logika` " oujsi´a" me´ trv diwri´sqai le´ gomen, ta` " de` ajnqrwpi´na" eij" ajmetri´an ejxa´ gesqai, eij mh` th` n aujth` n yuch` n ejpi` polla´ sw´ mata metabai´nein sunecw´ rhsen oJ lo´ go" . 54 Zacharias Rhetor (Scholastikos), Ammonius sive de mundi opificio disputatio (CPG 6996), ed. M. M. Colonna, Zacaria Scolastico. Ammonio. Introduzione, testo critico, traduzione, commentario (Naples, 1973), 109–10, also PG 85: 1072B–D. The edition by Colonna is preceded by a detailed introduction on the life and works of Zacharias of Mytilene. According to her, the work possibly dates after 518 (ibid., 44–45). See also ODB 3:2218 for further bibliography. 55 See CPG 7746, PG 89:313BC (question 10) and 321A–C (questions 89–96). 56 See Epiphanios, Panarion, ed. Holl, 1:238–45 (Simon), 275–313 (Gnostics and Carpocratians), 2:93–186 (Markion), 3:13–132 (Manichaeans).

166 BYZANTINE IDEAS ON REINCARNATION AND FINAL RESTORATION Of all these heresies, I single out only the Carpocratians,57 the Markionites,58 and the Manichaeans,59 because Epiphanios explicitly associated them with the notion of the transmigration of souls. We know from other sources that the Gnostics themselves (who in Epiphanios’ list appear under nine different names) believed in the transmigration of souls.60 We have also seen that Epiphanios placed the Origenists in the same category (at least with regard to the transmigration of souls). At any rate, it should be safe to assume that metempsychosis was part of the heretical lore of the Ophites,61 the Colorbasians, or the Nicholaites,62 for example,63 or, to put it simply, of “all Gnostics and Manichaeans.” 64 It still remains a matter of speculation whether a number of these communities/sects even existed by the time Epiphanios was writing the Adversus haereses and, if so, how large these communities were.65 Christian criticism of the heresies of Simonian extraction is extremely harsh and exaggerated. The Theodosian code and later legislation provide the most severe penalties for the heretics of this brand (deprivation of the right to draw up wills and testaments, exile, and even death, by sword or fire).66 The reasons for this harsh treatment are not 57 For the Carpocratians see H. Liboron, Die Karpokratianische Gnosis (Leipzig, 1938); for further bibliography see Pourkier, L’he´re´siologie chez Epiphane, 505–6. 58 For Markion see D. W. Deakle, The Fathers against Marcionism: A Study of the Methods and Motives in the Developing Patristic Anti-Marcionite Polemic (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1991). 59 For Mani and the Manichaeans see R. Merkelbach, Mani und sein Religionssystem (Opladen, 1986). 60 For Gnosticism see B. Layton, ed., The Rediscovery of Gnosticism: Proceedings of the International Conference on Gnosticism at Yale, New Haven, Connecticut, March 28–31, 1978, 2 vols. (Leiden, 1980), and R. T. Wallis and J. Bregman, eds., Neoplatonism and Gnosticism (Albany, 1992). 61 For the Ophites see B. Witte, Das Ophiten-diagramm nach Origenes’ Contra Celsum VI 22–38 (Altenberge, 1993), and de Faye, Gnostiques et Gnosticisme, 349–54. 62 For the Nicholaites see Pourkier, L’he´re´siologie chez Epiphane, 291–96, and further bibliography, ibid., 506. 63 It seems that John of Damascus uses the expression “[heretics] deny the resurrection of the dead” as an alternative indication of the Gnostics’ belief in reincarnation (which, one must admit, was not uniformly shared by all Gnostics (see below, note 64)). See John of Damascus De haeresibus, ed. Kotter, 4:28: to´ n te no´ mon su` n th' tw'n nekrw'n ajnasta´ sei ajphgo´ reusen, wJ" aiJ ajpo` Si´mwno" kai` deu'ro aiJre´ sei". This is a statement about Carpocrates, who elsewhere, in Epiphanios’ Panarion, is described as a proponent of reincarnation (see below). The same statement is applied by John of Damascus (who, as already mentioned, follows Epiphanios) to the Simonians, Valentinians, Secundinians, Marcosians, Colorbasians, Caianites, Archontics, Kerdonians, Markionites, and Severians, to name a few. Most of the remaining sects are referred to as followers of notions similar to those espoused by the Gnostic proponents of reincarnation (ibid., 4:27–35). However, this expression may sometimes indicate simply the (Jewish in origin) rejection of the belief in the resurrection of the body without clearly indicating belief in reincarnation. This is the case, for example, of Epiphanios’ Panarion, ed. Holl, 2:510, although the same expression used elsewhere even by Epiphanios (ibid., 2:100) agrees in meaning with John of Damascus’ usage (ajna´ stasin de` wJ" ei«pon ou»to" [i.e., Markion] le´ gei oujci` swma´ twn, ajlla` yucw'n kai` swthri´an tau´ tai" oJri´zetai, oujci` toi'" sw´ masin. kai` metaggismou` " oJmoi´w" tw'n yucw'n kai` metenswmatw´ sei" ajpo` swma´ twn eij" sw´ mata.). 64 For Gnostic eschatology and the various “destinies” that await the souls after death, according to the particular Gnostic denominations, see A. H. B. Logan, Gnostic Truth and Christian Heresy: A Study in the History of Gnosticism (Edinburg, 1996), 259–319, esp. 308 and 313. 65 If early Byzantine legislation is a valid indicator, it seems that a number of heretics, especially of the Gnostic type, attracted the attention of emperors to the point of their introducing frequent antiheretic laws. See CTh 1.2, 855–906. As late as May 430 a law of Theodosios and Valentinian reiterated earlier prescriptions against Manichaeans (ibid., 878, 16.5, 65). The Carpocratians, though, seem to have disappeared by the 3rd century (see Pourkier, L’he´re´siologie chez Epiphane, 257). 66 See, for example, the numerous provisions in CTh and the 8th-century Ekloga of Leo III and Constantine V, 17.52: OiJ manicai'oi kai` montanoi` xi´fei teleiou´ sqwsan. L. Burgmann, ed., Ecloga. Das Gesetzbuch Leons’ III. und Konstantinos’ V. (Frankfurt am Main, 1983), 242.

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relevant to this study. I would like to stress, however, that the Gnostic sects, and especially the Taskodrougoi and the Manichaeans, were treated severely. Given the level of Christian hostility toward dualism in general, Epiphanios’ writings are not extremely harsh. Still, the case of the Carpocratians is the most interesting in this respect because—according to Epiphanios, who expands on Irenaeus’ Adversus Haereses— 67 what was most hideous about them was not their belief in reincarnation, but the particular conduct that they thought guaranteed deliverance from successive incarnations. For having fearlessly allowed their minds to work in a frenzied fashion, the [Carpocratians] have surrendered themselves to the passions of a myriad of lustful acts. For they claim that whatever is considered evil by the people is not evil, but good by nature (for nothing is evil by nature), and people [only] imagine that it is evil. If one experiences all these [evils] in the course of a particular [incarnation], his soul is no longer going to be reincarnated in order to repay [old sins], but, having done everything [wicked] in one life, it is bound to be set free [from the circle of reincarnations] released from and owing nothing to the . . . world. As for what these [evil] deeds are I am afraid to say . . . however, I will force myself to speak with decency without straying away from the truth. And what else do they do apart from countless unspeakable and unlawful acts, which I am not permitted to even mention? They perform . . . homosexual acts and have lustful intercourse . . . with women. They also practice sorcery, witchcraft, and idolatry, saying that this is the way to repay the debts of their bodies so that they owe nothing and for that reason their souls are not going to turn back after death and proceed to a new reincarnation.68

As Epiphanios adds, the Carpocratians believe that individuals who do not manage to accomplish all these things in one life should not be concerned. In their next reincarnation there will be more opportunities to improve their record.69 This, of course, contrasts greatly with the practices of other similar sects like the Manichaeans or later the Bogomils who preached abstinence from sex.70 Next to the Carpocratians, the Markionites were See Pourkier, L’he´re´siologie chez Epiphane, 257–61. Epiphanios, Panarion, ed. Holl, 1:305–6: ajdew'" ga` r to` n nou'n aujtw'n eij" oi«stron ejkdedwko´ te" pa´ qesin hJdonw'n muri´wn eJautou` " paradedw´ kasi. fasi` ga` r o”ti o”sa nomi´zetai para` ajnqrw´ poi" kaka` ei«nai ouj kaka` uJpa´ rcei, ajlla` fu´ sei kala´ ⭈ (oujde` n ga´ r ejsti fu´ sei kako´ n), toi'" de` ajnqrw´ poi" nomi´zetai ei«nai fau'la. kai` tau'ta pa´ nta eja´ n ti" pra´ xh ejn th' mia' tau´ th parousi´a, oujke´ ti metenswmatou'tai aujtou' hJ yuch` eij" to` pa´ lin ajntikatablhqh'nai, ajlla` uJpo` e’n poih´ sasa pa'san pra'xin ajpallagh´ setai, ejleuqerwqei'sa kai` mhke´ ti crewstou'sa´ ti tw'n pro` " pra'xin ejn tv' ko´ smv. poi´an de` pra'xin de´ dia pa´ lin eijpei'n, mh` borbo´ rou di´khn kekalumme´ nou ojceto` n ajpokalu´ yw kai´ tisi do´ xw loimw´ dou" dusodmi´a" ejrga´ zesqai th` n ejmfo´ rhsin. ajll’ o”mw" ejpeidh´ per ejx ajlhqei´a" suneco´ meqa ta` para` toi'" hjpathme´ noi" ajpokalu´ yai, semno´ teron eijpei'n te kai` th'" ajlhqei´a" mh` e“xw bai´nein ejmauto` n katanagka´ sw. ti´ de` ajll’ o”ti pa'san ajrrhtourgi´an kai` ajqe´ miton pra'xin, h’n ouj qemito` n ejpi` sto´ mato" fe´ rein, ou»toi pra´ ttousin kai` pa'n ei«do" ajndrobasiw'n kai` lagniste´ rwn oJmiliw'n pro` " gunai'ka" ejn eJka´ stv me´ lei sw´ mato"⭈ magei´a" te kai` farmakei´a" kai` eijdwlolatrei´a" ejktelou'nte" tou'to ei«nai´ fasin ejrgasi´an ajpodo´ sew" tw'n ejn tv' sw´ mati ojflhma´ twn eij" to` mhke´ ti ejgkalei'sqai h‘ me´ llein ti pra´ xew" e“rgon ajpaitei'sqai, kai` tou´ tou e”neka mh` ajpostre´ fesqai th` n yuch` n meta` th` n ejnteu'qen ajpallagh` n kai` pa´ lin eij" metenswma´ twsin kai` metaggismo` n cwrei'n. 69 Ibid., 1:307–8. 70 The problem of licentiousness is generally related to Gnosticism. A number of sects, such as the Carpocratians, the Nicholaites, and the followers of Basilides, were associated with licentious practices. See de Faye, Gnostiques et Gnosticisme, 413–28, and Pourkier, L’he´re´siologie chez Epiphane, 270–72. However, Gnosticism in general was marked by a tendency toward continence and celibacy. See H. Chadwick, “The Domestication of Gnosis,” in Layton, The Rediscovery of Gnosticism (as above, note 60), 3–16, esp. 4–11. Chadwick stresses that “there were occasional Gnostic groups which mingled erotic elements in their cult, but they were neither typical nor representative” (ibid., 11). 67 68

168 BYZANTINE IDEAS ON REINCARNATION AND FINAL RESTORATION followers of a widespread heresy, according to Epiphanios, another dualist sect whose members believed in metempsychosis.71 The last reincarnational heresy of the pre- and early Byzantine period is the system of Mani. Much better known than any other heresy of these times, its intellectual connections with India and Persian Zoroastianism and its presence even in China are well attested.72 The early heresiologists give ample information concerning the reincarnation doctrines espoused by the followers of Mani, and it is possible to place Manichaeanism among the pessimistic dualist heresies. In general, Mani divides humankind into three lots (Elect, Hearers, and Sinners). After death the souls of Sinners receive severe (if not eternal) punishments, while the souls of the Hearers return and are reincarnated on earth. The souls of the Elect sail to the “Land of Light.” 73 Mani assures his followers that a sinner’s soul may return in an animal’s or even a plant’s body.74 An example of the elaborate incarnational beliefs of Mani is the following. He taught that the souls of those who harvested the crops would be reincarnated in the bodies of mute persons.75 Other interesting pieces of information are also available in the works of Cyril of Jerusalem,76 Theodoret of Cyrrhus,77 and Zacharias of Mytilene,78 as well as in the history of Peter of Sicily.79 The influence of Manichaeanism’s memory in later Byzantium is so strong that all the dualist heresies of the later Byzantine period are usually described as Manichaean. Later Byzantine authors stress the affinity of these heresies—Paulicianism and Bogomilism—with that of the Manichaeans and consider them as mutations of Manichaeanism.80 Epiphanios, Panarion, ed. Holl, 2:94, 100. See ibid., 3:13–132. For Mani and Manichaeism, see ODB 2:1283–84, with further bibliography. For Manichaeisms in Asia, see H.-J. Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silk Road: Gnostic Texts from Central Asia (San Francisco, 1993); and Geng Shimin, “Recent Studies on Manichaeism in China,” in Studia Manichaica II. Internationalen Kongress zum Manicha¨ismus (6–10. August 1989, St. Augustin/Bonn), ed. G. Wiessner and H. J. Klimkeit (Wiesbaden, 1992), 98–104. 73 Information provided by Augustine in his Contra Faustum, 20.21. See A. V. Williams Jackson, “A Sketch of the Manichean Doctrine concerning the Future Life,” JAOS 50.3 (1930): 177–98, esp. 178–79, and idem, “The Doctrine of Metempsychosis in Manichaeism,” JAOS 45 (1925): 246–68. 74 For a collection of many Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Chinese sources on Manichaean beliefs in reincarnation, see G. Casadio, “The Manichean Metempsychosis: Typology and Historical Roots,” in Wiessner and Klimkeit, Studia Manichaica II, 106–30 (texts, 113–26). 75 See Epiphanios, Panarion, ed. Holl, 3:62 (hJ yuch´ . . . eja` n qeri´sasa euJreqh' eij" moggila´ lou" metafe´ retai). Note that Epiphanios in this part preserves Hegemonios’ Acta Archelai; see CPG 3570. 76 See Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis ad illuminandos, 1–18 (cat. VI, 31) (CPG 3585.2), ed. W. K. Reischl, Cyrilli Hierosolymorum archiepiscopi opera quae supersunt omnia, vol. 1 (Munich, 1848), 200. 77 See Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Graecarum affectionum curatio (CPG 6210), PG 83:380CD. 78 See Zacharias of Mytilene, Capita VII contra Manichaeos (CPG 6997), in S. N. C. Lieu, “An Early Byzantine Formula for the Renunciation of Manichaeism,” JbAC 26 (1983): 184. 79 See Peter of Sicily, Pe´ trou Sikeliw´ tou, iJstori´a creiw´ dh" e“legco´ " te kai` ajnatroph` th'" kenh'" kai` matai´a" aiJre´ sew" tw'n Manicai´wn, tw'n kai` Paulikianw'n legome´ nwn, proswpopoihqei'sa wJ" pro` " to` n ajrciepi´skopon Boulgari´a", in C. Astruc et al. “Les sources grecques pour l’histoire des Pauliciens d’Asie Mineure,” TM 4 (1970): 33. 80 Concerning Paulicians as a Manichaean variation, see, for example, the statement in Zonaras’ history, ed. T. Bu ¨ ttner-Wobst, Ioannis Zonarae epitomae historiarum libri xviii, vol. 3, CSHB (Bonn, 1897), 389: Kata` de` th` n eJv´ an to` tw'n Manicai´wn ge´ no" h«n pamplhqe´ ", oi’ kai` Paulikia´ noi ajgroiko´ teron pro` " tou' dhmw´ dou" o“clou kalou'ntai, ejk Pau´ lou kai` jIwa´ nnou th'" klh´ sew" sugkeime´ nh" aujtoi'". For the Bogomils, see Anna Comne`ne. Alexiade, ed. B. Leib, vol. 3 (Paris, 1945), 218–19 (15.8.1.2–9): me´ giston ejpegei´retai ne´ fo" aiJretikw'n, kai` to` th'" aiJre´ sew" ei«do" kaino´ n, mh´ pw pro´ teron ejgnwsme´ non th' ejkklhsi´a. Du´ o ga` r do´ gmata sunelqe´ thn ka´ kista kai` faulo´ tata ejgnwsme´ na toi'" pa´ lai cro´ noi", Manicai´wn te, wJ" a“n ti" ei“poi, dusse´ beia, h’n kai` Paulikianw'n ai”resin ei“pomen, kai` Massalianw'n bdeluri´a. Toiou'ton de´ ejsti to` tw'n Bogomi´lwn do´ gma, ejk Massalianw'n kai` Manicai´wn sugkei´menon. For the accuracy of these statements, however, see below. 71 72

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John of Damascus wrote against the Manichaeans in the first half of the eight century,81 but it is difficult to ascertain whether his Dialogus contra Manichaeos is a response to existing needs of Christian polemics. Based on this work, one may suppose that the Manichaeans were active even at a time when the Paulicians had appeared on the scene. However, one should take into account that John of Damascus was writing in Muslim territory, in which Manichaeanism survived longer than it did in Byzantium. To sum up, during the early Byzantine period the ideas of the transmigration of souls and of final restoration were much stronger and more widespread among the members of dualist heresies than among the followers of the ancient pagan philosophers. This is to be expected: few could afford studies in ancient philosophy, which would have brought them into contact with Platonic and other philosophical ideas about souls. This situation intensified after the closing of the pagan schools by Justinian in 529. Social class, secular education (or the lack of it), and state prescriptions, therefore, were factors that conspired to produce the suppression of reincarnational philosophies such as Neoplatonism or Neopythagoreanism after the seventh century. It is impossible, however, to say whether persecution of paganism led (pro-pagan) people to join the ranks of dualist heresies. MIDDLE AND LATE BYZANTINE NOTIONS ABOUT REINCARNATION Among Heretics Despite numerous attempts at assessing the dependence of Paulicianism on Manichaeanism, we still have no definite answer to part of this problem. Byzantine sources, as already pointed out, are marked by a predilection toward finding in Paulicianism the continuation of Manichaeanism. Previous scholarship maintained that the majority of Paulicians were not related to or descendents of Mani.82 According to N. Garsoı¨an, Paulician doctrine adheres to two distinct traditions. The older one that persisted in Armenia throughout the history of the sect was “an Adoptionist doctrine with an emphasis on the importance of baptism and a rejection of extreme asceticism.” The second line appeared in Byzantium, “probably in the middle of the ninth century. This secondary branch of Paulicianism was characterized by a docetic Christology and a mitigated dualism.” 83 The sources for their history are silent on their beliefs concerning life after death.84 In addition, it is difficult to reconcile the detailed Manichaean beliefs in successive lives and future retributions owed, for example, by those who harvested plants with the fact that Paulicians excelled as warriors.85 See John of Damascus, Dialogus contra Manichaeos (CPG 8084), ed. Kotter, 4:351–98. See N. Garsoı¨an, The Paulician Heresy, A Study of the Origin and Development of Paulicianism in Armenia and the Eastern Provinces of the Byzantine Empire (The Hague-Paris, 1967), 186–230. 83 Ibid., 232. 84 For example, the impressive dossier put together by Astruc et al., “Les sources grecques” (above n. 79), does not include any reference to the eschatological beliefs of Paulicians and Bogomils. Only the History of Peter of Sicily repeats the same criticism found in earlier heresiologists about the reincarnation beliefs of the Manichaeans and assigns them to Paulicians as well (see ibid., 33). 85 This difficulty could have been corroborated by the contents of the so-called Key of the Truth, which was discovered in the 19th century and was written in 1782. That document implies that “There is but one last judgement for all, for which the quick and the dead (including saints) wait.” See F. C. Conybeare, The Key of the Truth: A Manual of the Paulician Church of Armenia (Oxford, 1898), xxxvi, 121–22, 175–76. Both Conybeare and Garsoı¨an have placed much importance on this document that supports the Adoptionist nature of Paulicianism, but recent scholarship has seriously criticized the attempts of both scholars. This criticism has 81 82

170 BYZANTINE IDEAS ON REINCARNATION AND FINAL RESTORATION Nevertheless, the Byzantines did not make any distinction between Paulicianism and Manichaeanism.86 In addition to the reference found in the treatise by John of Damascus mentioned above, one might find an indirect connection of Paulicianism with the reincarnation doctrine in a Byzantine Formula for the Renunciation of the Manichaeans. In chapter six of this formula those who believe in reincarnation are expressly condemned. This formula was later, probably after the tenth century, augmented with additional anathemas against the Paulicians. These anathemas were introduced as follows: “and furthermore I anathematize those who presided over the heresy (of Mani) in recent times: Paul and John the sons of Kallinike, . . . Genesios-Timothy . . . SergiosTychikos.” 87 These anathemas had to be signed by the heretics once they converted from Manichaeanism or Paulicianism to Orthodoxy. Since the names related above are all names of Paulician leaders, it becomes evident that the Byzantine (basically Constantinopolitan) churchmen who drafted these documents saw in Paulicianism the continuation of the doctrine of reincarnation among other Manichaean tenets. Since, in addition, recent scholarship has criticized the excessive preference given to the Adoptionist strain of Paulicianism and views the Byzantine Paulicians as another predominantly dualist heresy,88 it is reasonable to conclude that belief in reincarnation may have been part of the doctrines of the Byzantine Paulicians. Concerning Bogomils and reincarnation, the Greek sources are as silent as in the case of the Paulicians. H.-C. Puech hypothesized that eschatology was an underdeveloped branch of Bogomil doctrines,89 and he is probably right. Indeed, very few bits and pieces pertaining to Bogomil eschatology are transmitted by the sources. Euthymios Zigabenos in his Panoplia refers to the Bogomil belief in the resurrection of the dead body along with the demons that occupy the bones,90 a belief that is incompatible with the idea of reincarnation. Zigabenos, however, states that the Bogomils believe that their elect ones “do not die, but ‘transmigrate’, as if in their sleep, painlessly divesting themselves of this clay vestment of flesh and dressing themselves with the indestructible and divine stole of Christ.” 91 Finally, as Euthymios of Peribleptos states, the Bogomils rejected the dogmas of the resurrection of the dead,92 the Second Coming, and the Last Judgment. Furtherchallenged—on rather convincing terms—the antiquity and authenticity of this document and has shifted the focus onto the dualistic characteristics of Paulicianism. See J. and B. Hamilton, Christian Dualist Heresies (Manchester-New York, 1998), 295–97. 86 See P. Lemerle, “L’histoire des Pauliciens d’Asie Mineure d’apre`s les sources grecques,” TM 5 (1973): 124–26, 132–35. Certainly there is no evidence for the direct connection of Paulicianism to the Manichaeans, but for the Byzantines this was an easy way to come to terms with a new heresy. See also Hamilton, Christian Dualist Heresies, 8. 87 See Lieu, “Early Byzantine Formula,” 213. 88 See Lemerle, “L’histoire,” 12–14, and Hamilton, Christian Dualist Heresies, 292–97. 89 See H.-C. Puech and A. Vaillant, Le traite´ contre les Bogomiles de Cosmas le preˆtre (Paris, 1945), 211–13. 90 See Euthymios Zigabenos, Panoplia dogmatica, PG 130:1310C: Le´ gousin . . . eJka´ stv . . . tw'n a“llwn aJpa´ ntwn ejnoikei'n dai´mona . . . kai` ajpoqnh´ skonto" ejnoikei'n au«qi" toi'" leiya´ noi" aujtou', kai` parame´ nein tv' ta´ fv kai` ajname´ nein th` n ajna´ stasin, i”na su` n aujtv' kolasqei´h kai` mhd’ ejn th' kola´ sei tou´ tou diacwri´zoito. 91 Ibid., PG 130:1317C: Le´ gousi tou` " toiou´ tou" mh` ajpoqnh´ skein, ajlla` meqi´stasqai, kaqa´ per ejn u”pnv, to` ph´ linon touti` kai` sa´ rkinon peribo´ laion ajpo´ nw" ejkduome´ nou", kai` th` n a“fqarton kai` qei´an tou' Cristou' stolh` n ejnduome´ nou" . . . to` d’ ajpoduqe` n sw'ma tou´ twn eij" te´ fran kai` ko´ nin dialu´ esqai, mhke´ ti mhdamw'" ajnista´ menon. See D. Obolensky, The Bogomils: A study in Balkan Neo-Manichaeism (Cambridge, 1948), 215. 92 See G. Ficker, Die Phundagiagiten: Ein Beitrag zur Ketzergeschichte des byzantinischen Mittelalters (Leipzig, 1908), 38: Dida´ skousi de` oiJ pammi´aroi, wJ" e“fhmen, nekrw'n ajna´ stasin mh` prosdoka'n mhde` deute´ ran parousi´an, mhde` kri´sin qeou', ajll’ o”ti pa'sa hJ ejxousi´a tw'n ejpigei´wn, ei“te ko´ lasi", kai` oJ para´ deiso" eij" ejxousi´an eijsi`n tou'

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more, they claimed that the devil rules over this world and sends his friends to paradise and his enemies to hell. The combination of these three rejections may be an indication of transmigrational notions among the Bogomils.93 However, their perception of a paradise and a hell ruled by the devil renders any conclusion difficult for the moment.94 It is also regrettable that the confession of Basil, the Bogomil priest who was put on trial by Alexios Komnenos around 1098, is only partly preserved by Zigabenos in his Panoplia95 and by Anna Komnene in the Alexiad.96 Bogomilism became quite popular in the eleventh–twelfth century, attracting even affluent members of Constantinopolitan society.97 Moreover, Bogomilism spread to major monasteries, and several Bogomils were uncovered around the 1340s on Mount Athos. The synod in Constantinople subjected some of them to penance and expelled others from Mount Athos on charges related to Bogomilism.98 One of these charges was that they denied the resurrection of the dead, which may be part of a reincarnational belief system.99 We do not know much about these heretics after the establishment of the Ottoman Empire in southeastern Europe. In the western sources, however, Bogomils appear to adhere to the reincarnation doctrine. The western Bogomils, also called Cathars,100 were split into two different sects, the Absolute (radical) Cathars and the Mitigated (moderate) ones.101 Both, however, believed in reincarnation, their only difference being that the Absolute Cathars accepted the possibility of a soul entering an animal body, while the Mitigated allowed for reincarnation into successive human bodies only. Concerning Cathars,102 it is interesting to note a“rconto" tou' ko´ smou tou´ tou, h“toi tou' diabo´ lou, kai` o”ti tou` " fi´lou" aujtou' ba´ llei eij" to` n para´ deison, tou` " de` ejcqrou` " eij" th` n ko´ lasin. Translation in Hamilton, Christian Dualist Heresies, 153. 93 An additional feature of both Paulicians and Bogomils was that they abstained from eating meat. (For Paulicians see the abjuration formulas in Astruc et al., “Les sources grecques,” TM 4 [1970]: 201, and for the Bogomils see J. Gouillard, “Quatre proce`s de mystiques `a Byzance [vers 960–1143],” REB 36 [1978]). This practice may be connected with beliefs in reincarnation. See M. Loos, Dualist Heresy in the Middle Ages (Prague, 1974), 251: “An even more secret Cathar doctrine came to the knowledge of Peter of Verona, connecting the prohibition of meat with the mystery of metempsychosis. On its long pilgrimage towards salvation the soul passes through many bodies, not only those of human beings, but animals as well, those ‘with blood.’ It is therefore forbidden to eat animals and birds, but there is no objection to eating fish for they ‘are born of water’.” 94 For a different interpretation of the notion that there is no resurrection of the dead, see Obolensky, The Bogomils, 241, who sees in this belief a Jewish influence. 95 For Zigabenos’ omissions see PG 130:1332: Aijscu´ nomai, pisteu´ sate, kai` ajboulh´ tw" toiau'ta (i.e., Bogomil doctrines expounded by Basil) fqe´ ggomai. Dia` tou'to kai` ta` polla` pare´ dramon ejpi´thde" kai` spora´ dhn ta` rJhqe´ nta sunegraya´ mhn. 96 See Bu ¨ ttner-Wobst, ed., Ioannis Zonarae Epitomae historiarum libri, 3:743, and Anna Komnene, Alexiad, ed. Leib, 219–28; translation in Hamilton, Christian Dualist Heresies, 175–80. 97 For a discussion of the primary sources (Anna Komnene and Zigabenos) reporting on this reality, see Obolensky, The Bogomils, 197–205, esp. 201. 98 See A. Rigo, Monaci esicasti e monaci Bogomili. Le accuse di messalianismo e bogomilismo rivolte agli esicasti ed il problema dei rapporti tra esicasmo e bogomilismo (Florence, 1989), 135ff. 99 Ibid., 201. 100 For the relationship of Bulgarian Bogomils to the western Cathars, see D. Angelov, “L’influence de ´ tudes histoBogomilisme sur les Cathares d’Italie et de France,” Acade´mie bulgare des sciences. Institut d’histoire, E riques 4 (Sofia, n.d.), 175–90, and Hamilton, Christian Dualist Heresies, 43–52. 101 See D. Angelov, The Bogomil Movement (Sofia, 1987), 14ff. 102 How these heretics viewed the world in which their souls “did time,” entering one human body after another, is a mystery to us. In a recent nonacademic publication, an American-British art historian, Linda Harris, attempts an interesting, to say the least, interpretation of the paintings of the 16th-century Dutch

172 BYZANTINE IDEAS ON REINCARNATION AND FINAL RESTORATION that these sectarians combined belief in reincarnation with the notions imputed to Bogomils by Euthymios of Peribleptos (i.e., rejection of the resurrection of the dead, the Second Coming, and the Last Judgment).103 The Inquisition records in this respect seem to be more complete than the accounts of the Bogomils by Zigabenos and Anna Komnene. Among Byzantine Philosophers It has already been stated that pagan/Hellenic notions about metempsychosis are directly connected to pagan education or simply education. It is not a surprise, therefore, that discussion of reincarnation is rather nonexistent at times of general cultural decline such as the eighth century.104 As education picks up pace in Byzantium, the frequency of references to metempsychosis increases. Yet within the broader Byzantine philosophical context, interest in metempsychosis was minimal. Photios in his Bibliotheca rejects the idea of Hierokles of Alexandria that the transmigration of souls is proof of divine providence.105 Michael Psellos is also highly critical of the Greek dogma that the soul descends (from the heavens) assuming material garments, that is, bodies.106 John Italos, the student and successor of Psellos, was rather unlucky when his philosophical interests crossed with the idea of metempsychosis. I have already cited the anathema of the Constantinopolitan synod in 1082 which anathematized Italos for holding both the Platonic theory of metempsychosis and the Aristotelian theory on the destruction of souls at death.107 Since these two theories cancel each other out,108 it is likely that those who condemned him either did not understand what Italos had written or that they simply wanted to condemn en bloc both views for the simple reason that they had originally been introduced by pagan authors.109 It seems that people in the time of Alexios Komnenos were sensitive to these non-Orthodox notions. The rapid expanmaster Hieronymus Bosch. According to Harris, paintings such as The Garden of Earthly Delights or the Last Judgment are filled with Bogomil-Cathar symbols, and a number of scenes are understood by the author as depicting human souls waiting for a new reincarnation. See L. Harris, The Secret Heresy of Hieronymus Bosch (Edinburg, 1995), 215–38. 103 On this issue, evidence pertaining to the Cathars of southern France in the 14th century is found scattered among the depositions that make up the Inquisition Register of Jacques Fournier, bishop of Pamiers in Arie`ge in the Comte´ de Foix, from 1318 to 1325. The text has been published in its entirety by J. Duvernoy, Le Registre d’Inquisition de Jacques Fournier, ´eveˆque de Pamiers (1318–1325), 3 vols. (Toulouse, 1965). These records are extensively quoted by E. Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou, village occitan de 1294 `a 1324 (Paris, 1975). For the rejection of the resurrection of the dead, etc. among the Cathar peasants of Montaillou, see Duvernoy, Le Registre, 1:151–53, 206, 258–65, 309, etc.; for their belief in reincarnation, see ibid., 2:33–34, 107, 199, 407, 411, 489–90, 3:130, and 3:219. On Cathars and reincarnation, see also Loos, Dualist Heresy, 140–42, 244–45. 104 For Byzantine education and its development, see, among others, P. Lemerle, Le premier humanisme byzantin. Notes et remarques sur enseignement et culture `a Byzance des origines au Xe sie`cle (Paris, 1971). 105 See above, note 9. 106 See D. J. O’Meara, ed., Michaelis Pselli Philosophica minora, vol. 2, Teubner (Leipzig, 1989), 22–23, the very short essay Peri` Yuch'" . 107 See above, note 5. 108 Transmigration is predicated on the assumption that the soul preexists the body and continues to live after its death, whereas according to Aristotle the souls disappear along with the body after death. Cf. Nemesios’ understanding of Aristotle’s mortality of the soul in his De natura hominis (see Einarson, Nemesius [as above, note 9], sec. 2, lines 462–63). 109 For a discussion of this anathema, see Clucas, Trial of John Italos, 142–43. For Italos’ serious arguments ´ai kai` Lu´ sei"), (Ettal, against reincarnation, see P. Joannou, ed., Ioannes Italos, Quaestiones quodlibetales ( Apori j 1956), 63–69. See also J. Gouillard, “La religion des philosophes,” TM 6 (1976): 306–15.

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sion of Bogomilism on the one hand and pagan philosophy along with pagan learning on the other conspired to create a set of rather wary reactions on the part of the political and ecclesiastical authorities of Byzantium. It is no accident that the additions to the Synodikon of Orthodoxy related to John Italos provide for the anathematization of “those who study the Greek disciplines . . . not only for the sake of educational training.” 110 It is no accident either that George Tornikes in his funerary oration on Anna Komnene does not fail to remind his audience, when he speaks about her education, that Anna admired Plato, Aristotle, and the ancient philosophers, but she disagreed with their ideas on reincarnation.111 There seems to be not much more on the transmigration of souls during the late Byzantine period. A reference to reincarnation in Patriarch Kallistos I’s sermon Against Gregoras does not enrich the overall picture. Given by the former Constantinopolitan patriarch sometime between 1357 and 1359, the sermon complains about the introduction into a text of Nikephoros Gregoras112 of a particular formulation that opens the door to the idea of the transmigration of souls.113 In later Byzantium it is likely that learned people were not very interested in philosophical ideas on the transmigration of souls. Niketas Stethatos, for example, in his work On the Soul never felt obliged even to mention any other alternative of the soul’s fate after death apart from the standard Orthodox view. Only once does he state that wicked souls go to Hades, but get some solace when the living give charity or celebrate a liturgy in their memory.114 However, during the last years of the Byzantine Empire metempsychosis returns in the work of George Gemistos Plethon and in his discussions with a circle of friends that included, among other famous people, Cardinal Bessarion. Plethon was a Neoplatonist 110 See Clucas, Trial of John Italos, 154ff; Greek text in Gouillard, “Le Synodicon,” 59. For the implications of these anathemas concerning education and the study of philosophy, see H. Hunger, Die hochsprachliche profane Literatur der Byzantiner, vol. 1 (Munich, 1978), 43–44. See also R. Browning, “Enlightenment and Repression in Byzantium in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries,” Past and Present 69 (1975): 3–23, esp. 11–15. 111 See J. Darrouze`s, Georges et De´me´trios Tornike`s, Lettres et Discours (Paris, 1970), 289: Kai` to` noero` n tw'n ajndrw'n kateplh´ tteto, oujk ejde´ ceto o”mw" aujtw'n to` ajpi´qanon th'" metemyucw´ sew". Ouj ga` r ejdedi´ei h‘ mh` ejpilei´poi Qev' ta` dhmiourghme´ na, oujk ejx u”lh" ajgenh´ tou dhmiourgou'nti, ajlla` ejk mh` o“ntwn ta` pa´ nta kti´zonti kai` para´ gonti h‘ mh` tou´ tv stenocwrhqei´h fu´ si" au“lo" kai` ajsw´ mato" . I wish to thank M. Patedakis for this reference. 112 See D. B. Gones, To` suggrafiko` n e“rgon tou' Oijkoumenikou' Patria´ rcou Kalli´stou A⬘ (Ph.D. diss., Athens, 1980), 189–90. The contested Greek text of Gregoras reads as follows: Mete´ cetai me` n oJ Qeo` " uJf⬘ aJpa´ ntwn, ajsce´ tw" de` kai` ajmerw'" kata` th` n eijko´ na th'" hJmete´ ra" yuch'" aJplh'" oi»on oujsi´a" ou“sh" kai` aujth'". Kai` ga` r kai` au”th pantach' tou' sw´ mato" ou«sa o”lh oJlikw'" mete´ cetai me` n uJf ’ eJka´ stou tw'n tou' sw´ mato" merw'n, ajmeqe´ ktw" de´ , ouj ga` r tou´ twn oujde` n tw'n aJpa´ ntwn gi´netai yuch´ ⭈ oujde` ga` r pe´ fuken. (God is partaken by all, but in a nonpossessional and indivisible fashion, in accordance with the paradigm of our soul which is a somehow simple essence. For [the soul] itself, being connected to all parts/molecules of the body, is wholly partaken by each part of the body on the one hand, but, on the other, with no commingling [between the two], for no part of the body becomes soul, nor has the soul been created as such by nature). 113 Three more references—the first in a hagiographic work of John of Damascus (Passio s. Artemii), the second found in a small phrase transmitted by two inferior codices of the Life of St. Andrew the Fool, and the last (in fact the earliest one, dating from the 7th century) found in the Miracles of St. Artemios—are only useful for statistical purposes. One may suggest that hagiography does not seem to have bothered much about reincarnation. See John of Damascus, Passio s. Artemii (CPG 8082), PG 96:1280A; The Life of St. Andrew the Fool, ed. L. Ryden, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Studia Byzantina Upsaliensia 4, (Uppsala, 1995), 218; and V. S. Crisafulli and J. W. Nesbitt, The Miracles of Saint Artemius (Leiden-New York, 1997), 172 (Greek text) and 278 (comm.). 114 See S. Sakkos and G. Mantzarides, Nikh´ ta Sthqa´ tou, Mustika` suggra´ mmata (Thessalonike, 1957), 123–26.

174 BYZANTINE IDEAS ON REINCARNATION AND FINAL RESTORATION whose contribution to the Italian Renaissance remains to be assessed.115 The transmigration of souls is part of a wider philosophical-political system, which he tried to establish by emulating the Republic of Plato.116 Unfortunately, George Scholarios, the first patriarch of Constantinople under Ottoman rule, destroyed Plethon’s magnum opus The Laws after he had compiled an anthology of extracts from it.117 Plethon’s ideas on the transmigration of souls are found in the concluding paragraph of The Laws, the Epinomis that is preserved, and in a brief note entitled “Recapitulation of Zoroastrian and PythagoreanPlatonic Dogmas.” 118 In the Epinomis Plethon also gives a brief history of the dissemination of these “dogmas” similar to that presented at the beginning of this study. Interestingly enough, Plethon and Apollonios of Tyana entertain the same contempt for Egyptian philosophy.119 The death of Plethon, less than a year before the fall of Constantinople to the Turks, marks the end of the philosophical eschatological tradition in Byzantium. The church allowed Plethon a funeral in accordance with the Orthodox rite and turned a blind eye to his heretical views. Nevertheless, Plethon’s friends continued the Neoplatonic tradition in the West. Bessarion, who became a Roman cardinal and was considered twice for the papacy, wrote the following words to Plethon’s sons: “I have learned that our common father and master has shed every earthly element and departed to heaven, to the place of purity, joining the mystical chorus of Iacchus with the Olympian Gods. . . . if one were to accept the doctrines of the Pythagoreans and Plato about the infinite ascent and descent of souls, I should not hesitate even to add that the soul of Plato, having to obey the irrefragable decrees of Adrasteia and to discharge the obligatory cycle, had come down to earth and assumed the frame and life of Plethon.” 120 Bessarion’s wording is careful, but the idea of reincarnation was employed for eulogistic purposes, and one may assume that Plethon’s soul, whether in the Christian afterworld or in his Neoplatonic intelligible world, would have enjoyed this reference. CONCLUSION This rather cursory review of the notion of reincarnation among the Byzantines has made apparent a reality that mostly ignores this eschatological possibility, which is so common among other peoples and religions. In fact, there have been only two instances See, e.g., F. Masai, Ple´thon et le Platonisme de Mistra (Paris, 1956), 315–83, esp. 344. See C. M. Woodhouse, George Gemistos Plethon: The Last of the Hellenes (Oxford, 1986), 320–21. 117 Hunger, Die hochsprachliche profane Literatur, 24 n. 72a; for the detailed story of the manuscript’s fate, see Woodhouse, Plethon, 356–61. For the remaining fragments of the book by Plethon that was destroyed by Scholarios, see C. Alexandre, ed. and trans., Ple´thon, Traite´ des Lois (Paris, 1958; repr. 1966). For the dispute between Plethon and Scholarios, see B. Lagarde, “Le De differentiis de Ple´thon d’apre`s l’autographe de la Marcienne,” Byzantion 43 (1973): 312–43; idem, Des diffe´rences entre Platon et Aristote (Ph.D. diss., Paris, 1976); idem, “Contre les objections de Scholarios en faveur d’Aristote (Re´plique),” Byzantion 59 (1989): 354–507 [⫽ E. V. Maltese, Georgius Gemistos Plethon Contra Scholarii pro Aristotelis Obiectiones, Teubner (Leipzig, 1988)] (for bibliography see Cacouros [as above, note 17], 1379). 118 PG 160:973B–974D, Plh´ qwno" Zwroastrei´wn te kai Platwnikw'n dogma´ twn sugkefalai´wsi" . For the sources of Plethon’s ideas, see Woodhouse, Plethon, 62–78. For a new edition see Br. Tambrun-Krasker, ed., Magika` lo´ gia tw'n ajpo` Zwroa´ strou ma´ gwn: Gewrgi´ou Gemistou' Plh´ qwno" jExh´ ghsi" eij" ta` aujta` lo´ gia. Oracles chaldaı¨ques recension de Georges Ge´miste Ple´thon. La recension arabe des Magika` lo´ gia par Michel Tardieu, Corpus philosophorum Medii Aevi, Byzantinoi philosophoi ⫽ Philosophi Byzantini 7 (Athens-Paris-Brussels, 1995). 119 See Plethon, jEpinomi´", PG 160:971AB. 120 Greek text in PG 161:695–98; see also Masai, Ple´thon, 307. 115 116

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in which the Byzantines seriously addressed the issue. The first was in the dialogue Theophrastus by Aeneas of Gaza121 and the second in the work of Plethon, in which reincarnation was seriously considered. What is strange is that we see no later references to Theophrastus in Byzantium (with the exception of the Nachleben of a few questions in Anastasios of Sinai which still were disconnected from reincarnation). There are only occasional references to reincarnation made by a very few individuals (such as Photios or Psellos). These references were always premised in a wider context of antipagan or antiheretic polemics. Therefore, it seems as though the subject of the transmigration of souls had been resolved once and for all after the turn of the fifth century. Theophrastos, on the one hand, and the anathemas against Origen, and the Origenists issued by the Fifth Ecumenical Council on the other might have put the whole problem to rest. Still one does not know even today whether the Gnostic infiltration of the early monastic communities in fourth-century Egypt and the spread of Origenism in the Palestinian monasteries in the fifth and sixth centuries were accompanied by dissemination of the particular belief in reincarnation. As Chadwick suggests, the Nag Hammadi Gnostic documents “must have been regarded by their monkish readers (i.e., the Christian monks of the Pachomian monasteries) as edifying stuff, perhaps too esoteric . . . but certainly not abhorrent.” 122 Whether this “edifying stuff ” included reincarnation is a matter of speculation, but cannot be completely rejected. In an entirely different premise, though, a more careful reading of a number of the sources cited in this paper shows that reincarnation is usually condemned along with the idea of the final restoration. This combined condemnation is aptly summarized in the passage of George the Monk referring to the anathemas of the Fifth Ecumenical Council (cited above, p. 163 n. 46): “against Origen and those who followed him in his impious dogmas, Didymos and Evagrios . . . and their . . . writings, in which they . . . said that the souls existed before the bodies, [and in which they] believed in the transmigration of souls . . . and that hell would come to an end.” The last notion that is condemned in this passage, the notion of hell coming to an end, bears greater significance than that of reincarnation itself. As already pointed out, Origen had rejected the notion of reincarnation but not the idea of the final restoration.123 Viewed under the prism of the final restoration, reincarnation becomes an insignificant technicality or detail. The question Christianity was interested in was whether evil (therefore hell) would persist eternally. And as Christianity follows a trajectory toward more and more philanthropic/humanitarian ways of living and believing, the final restoration might be one of the major topics of theological reconsideration. Highly relevant to this topic is a passage from the Quaestiones et dubia of Maximos the Confessor, in which he responds to an inquiry related to Gregory of Nyssa’s beliefs on the final restoration: The church recognizes three kinds of restoration . . . the third [kind], which Gregory of Nyssa mostly employs in his own sermons, is this one: the restoration of the soul’s powers, which have fallen into sin, to the state in which they were created long ago. For, just as See above, pp. 164–65. See Chadwick, “The Domestication of Gnosis,” in Layton, Rediscovery of Gnosticism, 16. 123 For more about the notion of ajpokata´ stasi" and further bibliography, see B. E. Daley, “Apokatastasis ¨nborn, and ‘Honorable Silence’ in the Eschatology of Maximos the Confessor,” in F. Heinzer and C. Scho Maximus Confessor, Actes de Symposium sur Maxime le Confesseur, Fribourg, 2–5 septembre 1980 (Fribourg, 1982), 309–39. 121 122

176 BYZANTINE IDEAS ON REINCARNATION AND FINAL RESTORATION all nature has to regain the incorruptibility of the flesh in the resurrection in the time that is awaited, so it is necessary that the fallen powers of the soul by the[ir] extension through the ages reject the memories of evil, which have been instilled [in the soul], and that the soul, passing through all the eons and finding no obstacle, come to God, who has no end, and thus, through the full understanding of—not [simply] by the partaking of—that which is good, regain its powers and be restored to its ancient [status] and the Creator be revealed as not responsible for sin.124

Maximos’ position on the final restoration may still be sub judice,125 but the possibility of his adherence to this doctrine remains open. One might even ponder the meaning of the sentence “the fallen powers of the soul by the[ir] extension through the ages reject the memories of evil.” If nothing else, Maximos presents his statement as part of the established beliefs of the Christian church (trei'" ajpokatasta´ sei" oi«den hJ ejkklhsi´a). To conclude, reincarnation and the final restoration may have been outside the immediate interests of the majority of Byzantine Christians (as long as they were not dualist heretics). It is also likely that the Byzantines never considered reincarnation as a serious eschatological possibility, despite the prima facie advantages presented by Aeneas of Gaza in Theophrastus.126 The Byzantines had at least one more appealing alternative, presented to pious people in short stories embedded in hagiography, in the Apophthegmata patrum, and in the genre of Erotapokriseis such as the Quaestiones et responsiones of Anastasios of Sinai.127 If, according to N. Berdyaev, “the doctrine of reincarnation, which has obvious advantages, involves . . . another nightmare—the nightmare of endless incarnations, of infinite wanderings along dark passages,” and if the same doctrine “finds a solution of man’s destiny in the cosmos and not in God,” 128 these stories spoke of simple Christians who obtained salvation beyond the cosmos through a single act. That single act of piety or human compassion was enough to redeem a lifetime of sin. For example, there is a story in which a robber who committed all sorts of crimes (even murders) was finally saved thanks to his handkerchief that was wet with the tears he had shed in repentance Note that this passage does not seem to have attracted the attention of scholars who have written on Maximos and his ideas on restoration. For instance, Daley, “Apokatastasis,” does not examine this fragment. The full Greek text reads as follows: jEpeidh` Grhgo´ rio" oJ Nu´ sh" ejn toi'" eJautou' suggra´ mmasin fai´netai toi'" mh` to` ba´ qo" ejpistame´ noi" th'" uJyhlh'" aujtou' qewri´a" pollacou' ajpokata´ stasin uJpemfai´nein, parakalw' o”per ejpi´stasai peri` tou´ tou eijpei'n. Trei'" ajpokatasta´ sei" oi«den hJ ejkklhsi´a⭈ mi´an me` n th` n eJka´ stou kata` th'" ajrethˆ " lo´ gon, ejn h» ajpokaqi´statai to` n ejp’ aujtv' lo´ gon th'" ajreth'" ejkplhrw´ sa"⭈ deute´ ran de´ th` n th'" o”lh" fu´ sew" ejn th' ajnasta´ sei, th` n eij" ajfqarsi´an kai` ajqanasi´an ajpokata´ stasin⭈ tri´th de´ , h» kai` ma´ lista katake´ crhtai ejn toi'" eJautou' lo´ goi" oJ Nu´ sh" Grhgo´ rio", ejsti`n au”th⭈ hJ tw'n yucikw'n duna´ mewn th' aJmarti´a uJpopesousw'n eij" o”per ejkti´sqhsan pa´ lin ajpokata´ stasi". Dei' ga` r w”sper th` n o”lhn fu´ sin ejn th' ajnasta´ sei th` n th'" sarko` " ajfqarsi´an cro´ nv ejlpizome´ nv ajpolabei'n, ou”tw" kai` ta` " paratrapei´sa" th'" yuch'" duna´ mei" th' parata´ sei tw'n aijw´ nwn ajpobalei'n ta` " ejnteqei´sa" aujth' th'" kaki´a" mnh´ ma" kai` pera´ sasan tou` " pa´ nta" aijw'na" kai` mh` euJri´skousan sta´ sin eij" to` n qeo` n ejlqei'n, to` n mh` e“conta pe´ ra", kai` ou”tw", th' ejpignw´ sei ouj th' meqe´ xei tw'n ajgaqw'n, ajpolabei'n ta` " duna´ mei" kai` eij" to` ajrcai'on ajpokatasth'nai kai` deicqh'nai to` n dhmiourgo` n ajnai´tion th'" aJmarti´a" . J. H. Declerck, ed., Maximi confessoris quaestiones et dubia (CCSG 10) (Turnhout, 1982), 19. I wish to thank D. Sullivan for his help with the translation. 125 See Daley, “Apokatastasis,” 314–18 and his conclusion, 337–39. Daley opts for a Maximos noncommitted to the Origenist view of final restoration. 126 Cf. the statement of Berdyaev: “There is more justice in the doctrine of Karma and reincarnation, according to which deeds done in time are expiated in time and not in eternity and that man has other and wider experience than that between birth and death in this one life.” N. Berdyaev, The Destiny of Man, trans. N. Duddington (New York, 1966), 274–75. 127 PG 89:312–824, esp. 706C. 128 Berdyaev, The Destiny of Man, 279. 124

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for his past actions.129 To the Byzantines, who listened to these stories, God’s love and philanthropy was much stronger and appealing than the logical exactness of the retributions for human actions provided in the detailed scheme of reincarnations taught by Mani. The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey 129 See Anastasius Sinaita, Oratio in sextum Psalmum (CPG 7751), PG 89:1112B–1113C. For more on the popular theology that underlies this kind of narrative, see V. De´roche, Etudes sur Le´ontios de Ne´apolis, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Studia Byzantina Upsaliensia 3 (Uppsala, 1995), 270–96.

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The Normans between Byzantium and the Islamic World LUCIA TRAVAINI

hen dealing with the subject of monetary transactions and exchanges involving the Normans of Italy, Byzantium, and the Islamic world, scholars have been cautioned to use care when discussing terms such as influence (was there a donor culture?), borrowing (was it residual, recent, or antiquarian?), and propaganda which certainly played a role in Norman thinking and practice.1 What do we mean by “the Normans in Italy”? There were at least three or four Norman Italies: Byzantine, Lombard, Muslim, and FrenchNorman, each having its own monetary tradition, different from each other and well documented in charters and finds. The many frontiers of medieval Italy are particularly mobile and certainly existed in the period under examination, the eleventh and twelfth centuries.2

W

Ce´cile Morrisson read a first draft of this paper; Vera von Falkenhausen and Jonathan Shepard helped me with precious references; Philip Grierson revised my English in the final version. I am very grateful to all of them for comments and discussion. 1 M. McCormick, “Byzantium and the Early Medieval West: Problems and Opportunities,” in Europa medievale e mondo bizantino. Contatti effettivi e possibilita` degli studi comparati, Tavola rotonda del XVIII Congresso del CISH-Montre´al, 29 agosto 1995, ed. G. Arnaldi and G. Cavallo, Nuovi Studi Storici 40, Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo (Rome, 1997), 1–17. 2 G. Arnaldi, “Italia,” in Enciclopedia dell’ arte medievale, vol. 7 (Rome, 1996), 451–56; J.-M. Martin, “Les proble`mes de la frontie`re en Italie me´ridionale (VIe–XIIe sie`cles): L’approche historique,” in Castrum 4, Frontie`re et peuplement dans le monde me´diterrane´en au moyen age, Actes du colloque d’Erice-Trapani, 18–25 septembre 1988, ed. J.-M. Poisson, Collection de la Casa de Velasquez-Collection de l’Ecole Franc¸aise de Rome 105 (Rome-Madrid, 1992), 259–76, and J.-M. Martin, Italies Normandes (Paris, 1994). The different monetary traditions of Norman Italy have long determined the slow development of numismatic research in this field: Arab coins of Sicily were studied separately from, e.g., the copper follari of Salerno or other series. The first comprehensive study including Sicily as well as southern Italy was by G. Sambon, Repertorio generale delle monete coniate in Italia e da Italiani all’estero dal secolo V al XX. Periodo dal 476 al 1266 (Paris, 1912; repr. Modena, 1975); see now L. Travaini, La monetazione nell’Italia normanna, Nuovi Studi Storici 28, Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo (Rome, 1995), and P. Grierson and L. Travaini, Medieval European Coinage with a Catalogue of the Coins in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, vol. 14, Italy (iii) (South Italy, Sicily, Sardinia) (Cambridge, 1998), (hereafter MEC 14). A clear and comprehensive overview of the economic relations of the Normans with their different counterparts is not easy when one considers the tendency of historical scholarship to increased specialization: see comments in P. Magdalino, The Byzantine Background to the First Crusade, Canadian Institute of Balkan Studies (Toronto, 1996), 5.

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MONETARY TRANSACTIONS AND EXCHANGE IN NORMAN ITALY I begin with a brief summary of the monetary areas in southern Italy in the eleventh century and how these changed in the twelfth. At the time of the Norman conquest of south Italy and Sicily there were essentially three different areas: Apulia, Campania, and Calabria. In Apulia, Byzantine coins were used more consistently than anywhere else, though their use was challenged by Lombard coins of Salerno and by silver denari of the north. By the mid-eleventh century, Lombard coinage was used in northern Apulia; a hoard from Ordona contained only one histamenon of Basil II and Constantine VIII as against 147 taris of either Amalfi or Salerno, the early types of which cannot be easily distinguished from each other.3 Denari of Pavia appear in charters from the 1060s onward as well as in finds, although finds cannot be precisely dated since immobilized types such as these papienses remained long in circulation. Far more numerous in finds are Byzantine folles, as we shall see later. One may note in passing the need to differentiate between the two gold coins in circulation, the heavy histamenon, weighing ca. 4.5 g, and the lighter tari, or quarter dinar, weighing initially just over a gram, but later dropping to 0.89 g. In Campania the local mints of Amalfi and Salerno had been minting taris from the late tenth century, but Byzantine folles were in general use and were only gradually replaced by the Salernitan follari, which were issued from the mid-eleventh century, as Philip Grierson showed more than forty years ago on the evidence of overstriking, a practice borrowed from Byzantium.4 Finally, in the Byzantine theme of Calabria, Byzantine folles were widely used until at least the end of the eleventh century, but by the end of the tenth century Sicilian gold taris with Arabic legends had become the favorite gold coin. This appears from the written evidence, which shows taris being hoarded in the treasures of Calabrian monasteries and the value of landed property being expressed in them.5 Taxes and penalties were expressed in nomismata, but this does not mean that such coins were used in actual payments.6 For the hoard, see R. Gurnet, “Le tre´sor d’Ordona,” in Ordona II. Les campagnes de 1964 et 1965, ed. J. Mertens, Etudes de Philologie, d’Arche´ologie et d’Histoire anciennes, Institut Historique Belge de Rome 9 (Brussels-Rome, 1967), 155–71, and comments below. 4 For an updated discussion of this practice at Salerno and a full bibliography, see MEC 14:61–67; also Travaini, La monetazione, 15ff. Before Philip Grierson’s first study of the overstrikings, the first Salernitan follari had been dated to the 10th century. 5 V. von Falkenhausen, “La circolazione monetaria nell’Italia meridionale e nella Sicilia in epoca normanna secondo la documentazione di archivio,” Bollettino di numismatica 6/7 (1986): 55–79, esp. 57; J.-M. Martin, “Economia naturale, economia monetaria nell’Italia meridionale longobarda e bizantina (secoli VI–XI),” Storia d’Italia. Annali 6: Economia naturale, economia monetaria (Turin, 1983), 181–219. This is a detailed overview of the monetary situation of southern Italy, but now in need of some revision; for example, Martin’s insistence (pp. 208, 219) on the absence of local coinage and on the foreign character of coins used in south Italy should be more nuanced, as suggested in L. Travaini, “Romesinas, provesini, turonenses . . . : Monete straniere in Italia meridionale ed in Sicilia (XI–XV secolo),” in Moneta locale, moneta straniera: Italia ed Europa XI–XV secolo. The Second Cambridge Numismatic Symposium. Local Coins, Foreign Coins: Italy and Europe, 11th–15th Centuries, ed. L. Travaini, Societa` numismatica Italiana. Collana di Numismatica e Scienze Affini 2 (Milan, 1999), 113–34. Also the presence of silver denari from the north in 11th-century Benevento and Avellino attributed by Martin to the scarcity of gold coins (p. 208) may be read as a preference for a medium-value denomination added to a system based on gold and copper. 6 Von Falkenhausen, “La circolazione monetaria,” 75–76, and 57 n. 15 for the Calabrian monastery. For solidi in Calabria, see below and note 43. 3

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A study of the distribution of Byzantine coinage in these areas brings to light some surprising facts. Byzantine gold coins are virtually nonexistent in finds despite the many references to them in written records, especially from Apulia. There are few gold nomismata in finds or collections, in contrast to the many finds of anonymous folles that have been recorded. The last type of nomisma to be represented in Italian hoards is a histamenon of Basil II and Constantine, and even it has so far occurred in only three hoards, each time as a single specimen, and in two cases obviously an outlier, possibly treasured not for “monetary” reasons but for “religious” ones, as discussed below.7 This paucity of material evidence contrasts with the many Byzantine gold coins described, often in full details, in south Italian charters. Ce´cile Morrisson wrote an excellent essay on the michaelaton and related coins,8 and there is a useful compendium of similar names in volume 3 of the Dumbarton Oaks Catalogue.9 One explanation is that progressive debasement would not encourage hoarding, for we know how Byzantine gold was debased in this period.10 Owners would want to get rid of debased coins in their possession, though one would expect some hoarding in anticipation of worse to come, despite a novel of Leo VI (886–912) having laid down that all official coins issued by an emperor, whether ancient or recent, should be accepted as legal tender.11 Another reason for not finding more Byzantine gold coins in eleventh-century Italy would have been that the tari, of lower value and more flexible use, had become the most acceptable higher-value currency in the area, though for Apulia taris seem to appear mainly in the northern part (Capitanata); even Byzantine Calabria was consistently using Sicilian taris well before the Norman conquest.12 A smaller gold denomination such as the tari was indeed a more suitable coin for a flourishing economy, evidence for which is provided by monuments such as the Romanesque churches and sculptures of the time.13 Travaini, La monetazione, 11 n. 4. C. Morrisson, “Le michae´laton et les noms des monnaies `a la fin du XIe sie`cle,” TM 3 (1968): 369–74. 9 P. Grierson, Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and in the Whittemore Collection, vol. 3, Leo III to Nicephorus III, 717–1081 (Washington, D.C., 1973), pt. 1, 44–62 (hereafter DOC 3). 10 C. Morrisson et al., L’or monnaye´, I. Purification et alte´rations de Rome `a Byzance, Cahiers Ernest-Babelon 2 (Paris, 1985), 127–53. 11 C. Morrisson, “De´couverte de tre´sors `a l’e´poque byzantine et monnaies inconnues: Le pantalaimia,” Bulletin de la Socie´te´ Franc¸aise de Numismatique 37 (1989): 150–52, esp. 152 (repr. in C. Morrisson, Monnaie et finances `a Byzance: Analyses, techniques [Aldershot, 1994], VIII). 12 For the treasures of Calabrian monasteries see above, note 6. According to J.-M. Martin, La Pouille du VIe au XIIe sie`cle, Collection de l’Ecole Franc¸aise de Rome (Rome, 1993), 453, in ca. 1050 African-Sicilian taris disappeared from Tyrrhenian southern Italy and “l’or ne circule presque plus en Italie me´ridionale,” but 11th-century Sicilian taris, pre-Norman and Norman, were even found on the shore of Salerno and payments in taris de lu cunte (i.e., of Count Roger I of Calabria and Sicily) are mentioned in Salernitan documents of 1125–49: see Travaini, La monetazione, 107 n. 24, 173 n. 62, 208 (the latter possibly a false quarter-dinar of al-Mustansir from Salerno). Phases of introduction, circulation, and withdrawal of coinage in southern Italy in the 11th century until 1140 are still to be clarified. 13 The economic level of Norman Italy has been the subject of much discussion recently. For a view of an economic backwardness in south Italy reflected by the coins used, see Martin, “Economia naturale, economia monetaria,” 210, and Martin, Italies Normandes, 331 ff. Other scholars, however, insist on the high economic standard of south Italy and Sicily in the 11th and 12th centuries. For example, G. A. Loud, “Coinage, Wealth and Plunder in the Age of Robert Guiscard,” English Historical Review 114, no. 458 (September, 1999): 815– 43, concludes by saying that “for churches to raise ready cash, a world of markets and exchange was necessary, and this was the context within which the Norman conquest of southern Italy took place.” For a discussion of coins and the economy in Norman Italy, see Travaini, La monetazione, 88–97, with bibliography. A positive view of the economy of Byzantine Calabria, particularly for the production of wine and silk, was given by A. Guillou, “Production and Profits in the Byzantine Province of Italy (Tenth to Eleventh Centuries): 7 8

182 THE NORMANS BETWEEN BYZANTIUM AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD Charitable payments in gold could be very large. Vast sums of Byzantine gold coins were offered by Robert Guiscard to the abbey of Montecassino, up to a total of 149 pounds of gold.14 In contrast, the Byzantine emperor Constantine IX used to give annually to Montecassino only two pounds of gold. In 1076 Michael VII Ducas increased the donation to 24 gold pounds annually, but unfortunately for the abbey he was deposed two years later.15 In the sums paid by Robert Guiscard to Montecassino, Byzantine coins still take pride of place. It is likely that Robert was able to put together large amounts of Byzantine gold, at least after his plunder of many rich monasteries in south Italy.16 But the gold coins actually circulating in the lands he had conquered were taris, and he did not try to restore a larger gold coin in his mints, but went on issuing taris after he took Amalfi in 1073 and Salerno in 1076, as he had done in Palermo in 1071.17 Much later, in the twelfth century, King Roger II undertook to pay the sum of 600 squifatos to the pope as his feudal lord, but presumably he paid the sum in his own Sicilian taris, counting them 4 to 1 scyphatus.18 Sicilian taris had by then become a well-established currency in the Mediterranean and were also being used by north Italians trading with Sicily.19 Byzantine copper coins, in contrast to gold ones, have come to light in substantial numbers, with clear regional differences. Folles of Romanus I (920–944) are most numerous in Campania, anonymous folles of Class C (ca. 1034–41) in Calabria, and folles of the period 1057–71 in Apulia. These regional differences seem to correspond to different phases in the political and military history of Byzantine Italy. Romanus I’s folles found in Campania must have remained in circulation for a long time, although they were eventually replaced by the local follari issued by Gisulf II. Those of Class C in Calabria, reflecting the military operations of George Maniakes in the late 1030s, likewise remained in circulation until the introduction of the issues of Roger I in ca. 1085–87, his first type of follaro being an imitation of the Byzantine type. Nor is it surprising that the latest An Expanding Society,” DOP 28 (1974): 89–109, repr. in Guillou, Culture et socie´te´ en Italie byzantine (VIe–XIe s.) (London, 1978), XIII. 14 Loud, “Coinage, Wealth and Plunder,” 823 ff; V. von Falkenhausen, “Aspetti storico-economici dell’eta` di Roberto il Guiscardo,” in Roberto il Guiscardo e il suo tempo, Relazioni e comunicazioni nelle Prime Giornate normanno-sveve (Bari, maggio 1973) (Rome, 1975), 115–34, esp. 132 n. 56; Leonis Marsicani et Petri Diaconi Chronica monasterii Casinensis, MGH, SS, vol. 7 (Hannover, 1846; repr. Stuttgart-New York, 1963), 743 (by Petrus Diaconus). For more details see below. 15 H. Houben, “Roberto il Guiscardo e il monachesimo,” in Roberto il Guiscardo tra Europa, Oriente e Mezzogiorno, Atti del Convegno internazionale, Potenza-Melfi-Venosa, 19–23 ottobre 1985, ed. C. D. Fonseca (Galatina, 1990), 223–42, esp. 233. 16 Loud, “Coinage, Wealth and Plunder”; von Falkenhausen, “Aspetti storico-economici,” 132; Houben, “Roberto il Guiscardo.” 17 For the coinage of Robert Guiscard, see MEC 14:81–87. A look at the penalties in Norman diplomas can be interesting. At the time of Robert Guiscard in the 1070s there are still many spiritual penalties (anathema), but gradually monetary penalties became the rule, expressed in libras auri, usually 50 in Robert’s time, later 100: H. Enzensberger, “Roberto il Guiscardo: Documenti e cancelleria,” in Roberto il Guiscardo e il suo tempo (as above, note 14), 61–81, esp. 73–77. Penalties cannot always be used as evidence for coins in actual use but are often a mirror of past uses. 18 Le Liber Censuum de l’Eglise Romaine, ed. P. Fabre and L. Duchesne, vol. 1 (Paris, 1910), 16. The tari was a quarter-dinar, and considering 1 dinar ⫽ 1 scyphatus (i.e., solidus) we arrive at 4 taris ⫽ 1 scyphatus, as it became in Roger II’s monetary system of 1140 with 4 Sicilian taris ⫽ 1 solidus regalis (Travaini, La monetazione, 59). 19 See the still fundamental study by D. Abulafia, The Two Italies: Economic Relations between the Norman Kingdom of Sicily and the Northern Communes (Cambridge, 1977), 217 ff; Travaini, La monetazione, 88, 101.

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folles are those found in Apulia, where the final Byzantine resistance took place.20 These data require updating (which I have not been able to do systematically), but new material for Calabria, put together by Ermanno Arslan, seems to confirm the pattern for the eleventh century while incorporating a larger number of finds of Norman copper coins,21 though the figures for these remain much below those of Byzantine folles. Presumably a change in the stock of coins in circulation was taking place, for as they consolidated their power and control over their territories, the Normans would have been able to introduce their own new coins and gradually demonetize old currency. They also introduced copper coins into Sicily, which under the Arabs had used only gold and silver coins. The Normans in varying ways tried to control the internal circulation of gold coins. The evidence from hoards in Sicily and south Italy shows successive demonetizations. First the use of Islamic quarter-dinars was abolished, leaving only Norman coins, either ones with Arabic legends only or those with a tau as their main type; later only taris with a cross were left in circulation.22 It is important to note that these are never found mixed with foreign gold coins. We know that Arab merchants in Palermo in the 1140s were supposed to change their Almoravid dinars or dinars of Tripoli at the local mint.23 Palermo and Messina were the only mints producing Sicilian taris, which were used all over the kingdom up to its northern borders, as a hoard from Montecassino shows.24 Foreign merchants landing in other ports of Sicily or southern Italy must have changed their coins locally. It is likely that each major trade center had facilities for money changing and weight control, and these centers may have been controlled by the crown.25 The See the graph in Travaini, La monetazione, 389–91; MEC 14:401. E. A. Arslan, “Ancora sulla circolazione della moneta in rame nella Calabria di X–XII secolo,” Me´l Rome Moyen ˆage 110.1 (1998): 359–78: in Calabria, Classes D, E, and F remain rare (D, only 3 specimens from excavations; E, 2 in a hoard and 1 in a museum collection; F, no specimen recorded); see also F. Barello, “Riflessioni sulle monete dagli scavi di Gerace e Tropea,” ibid., 425–30, describing Anonymous A2 and C as “protagonisti assoluti” in find records; Anonymous folles were found here in later contexts, as well as at Otranto, until after the 13th century, but this can be a case of residuality: see for this A. Travaglini, “Le monete,” in Excavations at Otranto, vol. 2, The Finds, ed. F. D’Andria and D. Whitehouse (Galatina, 1992), 241–78. 22 For the different types of crosses on Norman Sicilian coins, see Travaini, La monetazione, 39–40, 104; L. Travaini, “La croce sulle monete da Costantino alla fine del medioevo,” in La Croce: Iconografia e interpretazione, ed. B. Ulianich, Atti del Convegno internazionale Napoli, 6–11 dicembre 1999 (Naples, in press). 23 A group of African merchants agreed to buy Sicilian grain, sending dinars that were of pure gold; once at Palermo, the dinars would have been sent to the mint to be transformed into local taris by alloying the gold with one-quarter of its weight in silver. H. R. Idris, La Berbe´rie orientale sous les Zirides, Xe–XIIe sie`cles (Paris-Algiers, 1962), 2:666–67: reference from D. Abulafia, “Maometto e Carlo Magno: Le due aree monetarie dell’oro e dell’argento,” in Storia d’Italia. Annali 6 (as above, note 5), 223–70, esp. 242 n. 21. These data correspond exactly with what we know of the tari alloy, which remained stable for more than two hundred years. The alloy is described in various documents from the 13th century: it was 161⁄3 carats gold, i.e., ca. 68 percent gold, with silver and copper in proportion of 3 to 1: 24 percent silver and 8 percent copper (i.e., roughly 1⁄4 silver of its weight, as in the document quoted above). Analyses by touchstone, specific gravity, and gamma rays have confirmed a gold content of ca. 68–70 percent, although the proportion of the minor elements remained variable: see MEC 14:449–51, and L. Travaini, “The Fineness of Sicilian Taris, and of Those of Amalfi and Salerno (11th to 13th Centuries),” Metallurgy in Numismatics 4 (London, 1998): 504–17. Hoard evidence shows that the weight standard of the Norman Sicilian taris down to the reigns of Roger II and William I was still the Fatimid standard of ca. 1.05g, while the continental taris of Salerno and Amalfi had shifted to a lighter standard of 0.89g: Travaini, La monetazione, 103–7. 24 For a list of hoards of Sicilian taris, see Travaini, La monetazione, 364–67. 25 D. Abulafia, “The Crown and the Economy under Roger II and His Successors,” DOP 37 (1983): 1–14. 20 21

184 THE NORMANS BETWEEN BYZANTIUM AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD taris were spent by weight. The hoard from Montecassino, for example, shows how different in size and weight the taris were,26 and it was crucial for good trade practices that measures and weights could be trusted and controlled. Sicilian charters often express sums of taris with such formulas as ad pondus Panormi, or ad pondus Messane. We know that there was a slight difference between the ounce of Palermo and that of Messina, but references to particular weights may also refer to the fact that the weights had to be guaranteed and protected by official control and certified balances.27 In 1140 Roger II took steps to unify the different monetary traditions of his kingdom and established a new monetary system, as follows, with monies of account in italics. solidus regalis 1

Sicilian tari 4 1

ducalis 12 3 1

tercia ducalis 36 9 3 1

grain 72 18 6 2

follaro 288 72 24 8

The new monetary system was a mixture of Byzantine and Islamic elements. The new silver ducalis created in 1140 was one-twelfth of the solidus regalis of account, exactly the relationship of the Byzantine miliaresion to the nomisma.28 Sicilian taris were the highest effective coin throughout the kingdom. The unit of account was the ounce of taris, worth 30 taris, and next was the solidus regalis, worth 4 taris.29 While imposing throughout the kingdom a system based on the Sicilian tari, Roger retained local traditions, such as the base gold taris of Amalfi and Salerno circulating in Campania, worth about half the Sicilian tari. Amalfitan taris were slightly more valuable than Salernitan ones, but both functioned in Campania as coins of medium value, like the silver ducalis in Apulia.30 The introduction of the silver ducalis fortunately provoked the fierce opposition of the historian Falco of Benevento, since his account is the only written source we have on the reform itself.31 He gives us some of the valuations before and after the reform, mak26 See the color photograph of the entire hoard, but without the brooch, in Bollettino di numismatica 6/7 (1986): 4, pl. 1, and L. Travaini, “Il ripostiglio di Montecassino e la monetazione aurea dei Normanni in Sicilia,” ibid., 167–98. 27 See also below and note 83. 28 In 12th-century Byzantium the miliaresion was a money of account and was later replaced by the keration (⫽ 1/24th of the nomisma, but originally a weight): M. Hendy, Coinage and Money in the Byzantine Empire, 1081–1261, DOS, 12 (Washington, D.C., 1969), 26, and M. Hendy, Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and in the Whittemore Collection, vol. 4, Alexius I to Michael VIII 1081–1261 (Washington, `me mone´taire du D.C., 1999), pt. 1:58 (hereafter DOC 4). See L. Travaini, “Entre Byzance et l’Islam: Le syste Royaume Normand de Sicile en 1140,” Bulletin de la Socie´te´ Franc¸aise de Numismatique 46.9 (1991): 200–204. 29 At the same time, Roger fixed the standards for the alloy of the local taris of Salerno and Amalfi, which had previously been in some confusion. Recent analyses have shown that Roger established for the Salernitan ones an alloy of gold, silver, and copper in equal parts, and for the Amalfitan ones an alloy of 41.6 percent gold, 41.6 percent silver, and 16.8 percent copper: Travaini, “The Fineness of Sicilian Taris,” 509; MEC 14:451. 30 For the silver ducalis created for Apulia, see J.-M. Martin, “Le monete d’argento nell’Italia meridionale del secolo XII secondo i documenti d’archivio,” Bollettino di numismatica 6/7 (1986): 85–96, and Travaini, La monetazione, 216–17. 31 Travaini, La monetazione, 295–99; MEC 14:117–18; Falco’s chronicle is edited by G. Del Re, Cronisti e scrittori sincroni della dominazione normanna, vol. 1 (Naples, 1845).

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ing it possible to understand what was done. The new coin had been imposed at the value of 8 romesinae, which were then withdrawn from circulation. Roger also introduced a small copper coin valued 3 to 1 romesina.32 The romesinae thus abolished were formerly thought to be old Byzantine copper folles, assumed to be still circulating by 1140, but this interpretation is no longer acceptable. The Normans had introduced new coins and standards, and the weight of the copper coins had been greatly reduced in south Italy, as had happened in the Byzantine Empire with the reform of Alexios I in 1092. The “romesinae” were probably billon deniers of Rouen, as was first suggested by Grierson, and I have now accepted this view,33 since in fact deniers of Rouen have been found in hoards and single finds in many parts of south Italy.34 As for the ducalis, the new royal coin 60 percent silver fine, this was intended to replace foreign billon coins in the most rebellious province of his kingdom, Apulia, and the new coin was Byzantine in many ways. Like many Byzantine coins, it was concave; on the convex side it had a bust of Christ Pantocrator, and on the concave side King Roger attired as a Byzantine emperor and his son Duke Roger in military dress holding a long cross on steps. Michael Hendy was the first to compare the types of the ducalis to those of the debased concave histamenon of Alexios I, bearing a similar bust of Christ and showing St. Demetrios handing a cross on steps to the emperor.35 This type was struck at Thessalonike ca. 1082–85, during the period of the Norman war led by Robert Guiscard.36 Hendy suggested that the ducalis was a direct copy, supposing that the Normans might have obtained large amounts of these coins and kept them in quantity in some Norman treasury until they were copied in 1140.37 The hypothesis of a direct copy, however, may not be correct, and cultural and image borrowing may be nearer the mark: by 1140 the Normans of Sicily would have been capable of creating their own images, borrowing elements from different cultures. Even before becoming king in 1130, Roger II had displayed his image in the costume of a Falco’s values are as follows, accepting tres follares as 3 follari worth one old romesina: 1 ducalis ⫽ 8 romesinae ⫽ 24 new follari. 33 For some of the arguments in favor of the old interpretation, see L. Travaini, “La riforma monetaria di Ruggero II e la circolazione minuta in Italia meridionale tra X e XII secolo,” RIN 83 (1981): 133–53, though I have now abandoned this view, as explained in Travaini, La monetazione, 295–99. Martin (Italies Normandes, 323 ff) still adheres to the interpretation of romesinae as old Byzantine folles, but in his book review of Travaini, La monetazione he accepted both the identification of Falco’s romesina with the denier of Rouen and the need to differentiate between the abolished romesinae and the ramesinae of many Apulian documents (see J.-M. Martin in RN 151 [1996]: 361–66); many points still remain to be clarified, and more research needs to be done. See also MEC 14:118. 34 See lists of such hoards and finds in Travaini, La monetazione, 370, 387, and MEC 14:415, 424. Martin (Italies Normandes, 328, and La Pouille du VIe au XIIe sie`cle, 457) refers to “miliaresia of good deniers of Rouen” in a document of Gravina (1139), implying a real use of such coins, which indeed Roger II intended to stop, together with the use of other foreign coins (see Travaini, “Romesinas, provesini, turonenses,” 113–33). 35 Hendy, Coinage and Money, 41–42 and DOC 4:189 and no. 5a; for the Norman ducalis, see Travaini, La monetazione, no. 241 and MEC 14:120–21. 36 Before the Norman campaign, Alexios sent money to Emperor Henry IV to encourage an invasion of southern Italy: a sum of 144,000 nomismata in worked silver and romanata (Hendy, Coinage and Money, 47 and DOC 4:188). References to diplomatic payments and booties are important: cf. M. Hendy, Studies in the Byzantine Monetary Economy c. 300–1450 (Cambridge, 1985), 264–75, 314. 37 In Studies, 314, Hendy suggested that a large amount of such coins might have been seized by the Normans when they plundered Alexios I’s baggage train outside Durazzo in 1081; however, in DOC 4, the type of coin that is supposed to be a model of the ducalis is dated ca. 1082–85. 32

186 THE NORMANS BETWEEN BYZANTIUM AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD Byzantine emperor, though avoiding contentious titles and describing himself simply as R/II.38 An example of borrowing from classical literature is the use of the title ANAX (anax), never used before on coins, on a copper follaro of Messina of Roger II, issued soon after 1130, a time when it was necessary to find new titles for the new king.39 A case of borrowing from an ancient coin of Rhegium, but with oriental borrowing as well, can be seen in the copper follari of Messina of William II, second coinage, bearing a lion’s head.40 Grierson suggested that the new concave ducalis created by Roger II in 1140 might have been produced by Byzantine workmen, but Roger had already issued a concave coin as count (ca. 1112–20?), and concave coins might well have been produced by local workmen inspired by Byzantine coins.41 Thus Norman Italy created through “borrowing” a complex and mature form of expression.42 MONETARY TRANSACTIONS AND EXCHANGE OF NORMAN ITALY WITH BYZANTIUM AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD Monetary transactions have often involved plunder and dowries, as well as gifts and donations, and on these we have probably more evidence than on trade. Robert Guiscard had earned a reputation as a bandit and kidnapper before he became a great and highly respected public figure.43 Soon after the Byzantine defeat in Apulia in 1071, Emperor Romanos IV asked Robert to marry his son to one of his daughters, but nothing came of this; the same request was made by Michael VII more than once, with various diplomatic missions from Constantinople, all unsuccessful; only in 1074 did the emperor obtain a wedding contract from Robert including a treaty of alliance. Robert’s daughter was sent to Constantinople in 1076 where she took the name Helena. These transactions involved large sums of money, with 1,200 pounds of gold being given by Michael VII to the Normans, a sum largely in the form of pensions for imperial offices of different values granted to the Normans.44 This was an honorable way for the emperor to pay an annual tribute to Robert, as was clear to the Norman Amato of Montecassino: “Et ensi li empeor, liquel devoit recevoir tribut de tout le monde, rendi tribut a cestui duc. Car li empeor lui For these images, see MEC 14:109, cat. nos. 162–69, and Travaini, La monetazione, 281–82. Travaini, La monetazione, 51. 40 Travaini, La monetazione, 319, and L. Travaini, “Aspects of the Sicilian Norman Copper Coinage in the Twelfth Century,” NC 151 (1991): 159–74, esp. 166. 41 Travaini, La monetazione, 233; P. Grierson, “Pegged Venetian Coin-Dies: Their place in the History of Die Adjustment,” NC (1952): 99–105. 42 W. Tronzo, “Byzantine Court Culture from the Point of View of Norman Sicily: The Case of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo,” in Byzantine Court Culture from 829 to 1204, ed. H. Maguire (Washington, D.C., 1997), 101–14, stressing the creation of something completely new using both Byzantine and Islamic elements, this time imported into Sicily. Tronzo concludes that “these expenditures represented a truly extraordinary effort, and that Roger’s interests more than usually ran to the visual” (p. 113). 43 E.g., for the kidnapping of the governor of Bisignano in Calabria he received, according to Amato of Montecassino, 20,000 gold solidi: cited by Loud, “Coinage, Wealth and Plunder,” 827. 44 H. Bibicou, “Une page d’histoire diplomatique de Byzance au XIe sie`cle: Michel VII Doukas, Robert Guiscard et la pension des dignitaires,” Byzantion 29/30 (1959–60): 43–75; V. von Falkenhausen, “Olympias, eine normannische Prinzessin in Konstantinopel,” in Bisanzio e l’Italia. Raccolta di studi in memoria di Agostino Pertusi (Milan, 1982), 56–72; W. B. McQueen, “Relations between the Normans and Byzantium 1071–1112,” Byzantion 56 (1986): 428–37; Magdalino, “The Byzantine Background,” 11. 38 39

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mandoit par se messages mille et dui cent de livre de or avec preciosissime pailles de or et autres dompz.” 45 This makes it easier to understand how Robert was able to present the following gifts to Montecassino on different occasions between the early 1070s and 1085:46 600 bizantei, 5 pallia, and 1 navicula aurea 1 pallium and precious stones worth 700 skiphati 600 bizantei plus 2,000 tareni africani, 13 mules, 13 saracens, 1 carpet 1000 skiphati from Gallipoli in 1076, 300 bizantei and 2,000 tareni visiting Montecassino, 100 bizantei, and on the altar of St. Benedict 300 skiphati, 3 pallia, and other sums for the building, including 12 pounds of denari for the hospital and 100 michalati for painting the chapterhouse at Aquino in 1073, 500 bizantei on his second visit to the abbey, 12 pounds of gold, with 100 skiphati and one large pallium deposited on the altar on his third visit in 1084, he gave 1,000 solidi amalfitani (⫽ 4,000 taris of Amalfi) and 100 bizantei 1,000 tareni, one ship worth 1,000 solidi, and 400 solidi amalfitani from Romania, 1,000 michalati when ill, his wife sent 45 pounds of silver and 1 pallium after his death, she gave 300 skiphati The diversification of sums is sometimes difficult to explain, but it certainly reflects the variety of coins that were offered, together with possibly ingots (12 pounds of gold) and nonmonetary items such as pallia, mules, and slaves.47 Byzantine gold coins are referred to as bizantei or skiphati, while the term solidus is used as money of account; on two occasions michalati are mentioned, being either the still good solidi of Michael IV (1034–41) or more likely the debased ones of Michael VII (1071–78).48 Given the correspondence of 4 taris to 1 solidus ⫽ bezant ⫽ scyphatus, Robert offered almost the same quantity of Byzantine and Sicilian-African gold. Solidi amalfitani are also mentioned twice, being almost certainly taris of Amalfi. As G. A. Loud suggests, they may also indicate full dinars, of African provenance via Amalfitan traders; in Loud’s words, “one would not wish to be too dogmatic about this interpretation, but it does raise a most important question: how did Robert Guiscard obtain such substantial amounts of wealth?” 49 The answer lies primarily in plunder and conquest, although trade must have existed in spite of the military instability, for Norman Italy remained a flourishing state.50 Aime´ du Mont-Cassin, Ystorie de li Normant, ed. O. Delars (Rouen, 1892), bk. 7, 26, 298, as quoted by Bibicou, “Une page,” 74. 46 See above, note 14. 47 Loud, “Coinage, Wealth and Plunder,” 830. 48 Loud, “Coinage, Wealth and Plunder,” 824; see also Morrisson, “Le michae´laton,” Martin, “Economia naturale, economia monetaria,” 196, and Travaini, La monetazione, 151–52. 49 Loud, “Coinage, Wealth and Plunder,” 825. 50 See the surprised remarks in von Falkenhausen, “Aspetti storico-economici,” 134, and, for the discussion on the economic backwardness or splendor of Norman Italy, see above, note 13. 45

188 THE NORMANS BETWEEN BYZANTIUM AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD The role of Amalfitan trade has been briefly mentioned;51 that of Pisa and Genoa is also relevant for the economic history of Norman Italy and Sicily,52 though I cannot discuss them here with their imports/exports via Sicily and to and from the eastern Mediterranean, and with their competing ambitions.53 The Crusades were the decisive development that gave the Italian maritime republics great economic power, and Venice played a prominent role in events.54 In the twelfth century there are many references to Italians trading in Constantinople, mainly Venetians, Pisans, and Genoese. Amalfitans still held prominent positions but were acting in a private capacity, while the other Italians had the backing of their cities and formal treaties to help them. So, although the Amalfitans are described by Niketas Choniates as the best educated in Byzantine customs, the northern Italians took over.55 Amalfitans remained in the East, but had to accept a minor role.56 The northern Italians were also becoming more and more important in the kingdom of Sicily at this time. Coins of Genoa were brought to Sicily, and Sicilian taris were used by the Genoese. Although this is not apparent in finds, a trace of it may be seen in the gold coinage issued by Genoa.57 Between the Normans and Byzantium lay the Adriatic. Oddly its existence seems to have been little known to Roger II’s geographer Idrisi, though it bordered on his master’s kingdom. Abruzzo and Molise do not appear in his mid-twelfth century map, which jumps from the Gargano to the Tronto and the Marches.58 Adriatic relations were important: Ragusans had many contacts with ports in Apulia such as Molfetta, Monopoli, and Termoli, as well as in the north. In 1171 Ragusa seems even to have placed itself under the protection of King William I of Sicily instead of that of Byzantium, to prevent attacks from Venice.59 For Amalfitan trade, see Magdalino, “The Byzantine Background,” 14; H. Bresc, I fattori della distribuzione, in Storia dell’economia italiana, I. Il medioevo: Dal crollo al trionfo, ed. R. Romano (Turin, 1990), 171–91, esp. 174; and below, pp. 189–90. 52 See Abulafia, The Two Italies, 217 ff. 53 M. Tangheroni, Commercio e navigazione nel medioevo (Rome-Bari, 1996), 139. Pisa began the construction of its cathedral in 1064, making good use of the booty taken by sacking the port of Palermo, still in Arab hands. 54 Magdalino, The Byzantine Background, 13, notes that the success of the crusading movement could not have been sustained without regular sea communications between Europe and Syria. 55 V. von Falkenhausen, “Il Ducato di Amalfi e gli Amalfitani fra Bizantini e Normanni,” in Istituzioni civili e organizzazione ecclesiastica nello stato medievale amalfitano, Atti del Congresso Internazionale di Studi Amalfitani, Amalfi, 3–5 luglio 1981 (Amalfi, 1986), 9–31, esp. 30–31, and eadem, “Il commercio di Amalfi con Constantinopoli e il Levante nel secolo XII,” in Amalfi, Genova, Pisa e Venezia. Il commercio con Constantinopoli e il vicino Oriente nel secolo XII, ed. O. Banti (Pisa, 1998), 19–38. 56 V. D’Alessandro, “Amalfi in eta` normanna,” in Istituzioni civili e organizzazione ecclesiastica (as above, note 55), 33–52. 57 But the chronology of the first Genoese gold is still debated: cf. L. Travaini, “Genova e i tarı` di Sicilia,” RIN 93 (1991): 187–94; for the use of taris in Genoa, together with bezants of Syria and hyperpera of Constantinople, see Abulafia, The Two Italies, 225. 58 For Idrisi’s map and treatise, see F. Gabrieli, “Storia, cultura e civilta` degli Arabi in Italia,” in Gli Arabi in Italia, ed. F. Gabrieli and U. Scerrato (Milan, 1979), 15–269, esp. 188–203. 59 D. Abulafia, “Dalmatian Ragusa and the Norman Kingdom of Sicily,” SlEERev 54 (1976): 412–28, repr. in Abulafia, Italy, Sicily and the Mediterranean, 1100–1400 (London, 1987), X. On Adriatic relations in Norman times, see also idem, “Ancona, Byzantium and the Adriatic, 1155–1173,” PBSR 52 (1984): 192–216, repr. in Abulafia, Italy, Sicily and the Mediterranean, IX; idem, “East and West: Comments on the Commerce of the City of Ancona in the Middle Ages,” in Citta` e sistema adriatico alla fine del medioevo. Bilancio degli studi e prospettive ` dalmata di ricerca, ed. M. P. Ghezzo, Convegno di Studi, Padua, 4–5 aprile 1997, Atti e Memorie della Societa 51

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The variety of coins that could be carried across the Adriatic in 1177 is known in one case from the fact that some pirates from Dalmatia attacked a ship sailing north from the kingdom of Sicily to papal territory and robbed the papal legate on board, Raymundus de Capella. A clerk drew up a list of the missing goods, among which were various kinds of coins: Sicilian taris (tarrenorum regis Siciliae), marboti, masmutini, all of them gold coins, and four marks of silver pennies, which included English sterlingos and other coins such as megulienses (deniers and obols of Melgueil), provinos (deniers of Champagne), puglios (silver apulienses of King William II), and igeunos.60 As to the igeunos, their identification is not certain, but most likely they were French feudal coins, possibly of Dijon, such as the twenty-three specimens found in a hoard from Samos (buried ca. 1182).61 These do not necessarily represent the circulating medium in the southern Adriatic provinces, but they give an idea of the kind of coins that were used and carried across for trade or taxes, and that could have been exchanged anywhere, at least for their bullion value, against locally accepted coins.62 Most of the silver currencies listed in 1177 were in fact currently circulating in southern Italy, especially deniers of Melgueil and Champagne, and show that the crown, while controlling the gold circulation and enforcing the use of Sicilian taris, was not able to ensure that foreign billon coins were always melted in the royal mints. Coins of Melgueil were found in excavations at Otranto and Castelfiorentino.63 Deniers of Champagne are extremely common throughout southern Italy.64 Even a few Norman copper coins crossed the Adriatic, for follari of all twelfth-century Norman rulers, mainly from the mint of Messina, have been