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STUDIA PATRISTICA
VOL. CXV
Papers presented at the Eighteenth International Conference
on Patristic Studies held
in Oxford 2019
Edited by
MARKUS VINZENT
Volume 12:
The Cappadocian Writers
PEETERS
LEUVEN – PARIS – BRISTOL, CT
2021
Table of Contents
Emily Chesley
The Mercy of Macrina the Younger: A Portrait of a Way of Life....
1
Nathan howard
Epistolary Agōn in the Cappadocian Fathers ......................................
11
Gabrielle Thomas
‘Robes of Glory’ – Revisiting Theosis in the Theology of Saint
Gregory of Nazianzus..........................................................................
19
Georgiana huian
The Human Being in the Poetry of Gregory of Nazianzus ................
29
Alessandro de Blasi
Gregory Nazianzen’s Canon in Verse: The Poem I 1, 12, On the
Genuine Books of the Holy Scripture .................................................
41
Kyriakoula TzorTzopoulou
The Conceptualization of Envy in Gregory of Nyssa ........................
57
Jared R. BryanT
Cosmological Trinitarian Polemics in Gregory of Nazianzus’ Theological Orations ...................................................................................
69
Brendan A. harris
The Spirit as Creator in Gregory Nazianzen’s Or. 41.14 ...................
77
Taylor C. ross
‘Reformulating’ Gregory of Nyssa’s Reception of Origen ................
89
Olympe de BaCker
Struggling for the Divine Crown: Agonistic Imagery and Perfection
in Gregory of Nyssa’s In inscriptiones Psalmorum ...........................
99
Ty monroe
Toward Unity: On the Christology of Gregory of Nyssa .................. 107
Andrej KuTarňa
Light and Likeness in Gregory of Nyssa ............................................ 125
VI
Table of Contents
Liang zhang
Follow the Guide According to the De vita Moysis of Gregory of
Nyssa ................................................................................................... 133
Ann Conway-Jones
Negotiating between Exodus and Paul: Moses’ Transformation in
Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Moses 2.217-8 ......................................... 145
Joost van rossum
The ‘Heavenly Bread’ in Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Moses: A Eucharistic or Non-Eucharistic Interpretation? ............................................ 155
Gabriel Jaramillo
El proceder teológico de Gregorio de Nisa en De Vita Moysis e In
Canticum Canticorum ......................................................................... 161
Michael moTia
‘Language is the Author of All these Emotions’: Greek Novels and
Christian Affect in Gregory of Nyssa’s Homilies on the Song of
Songs .................................................................................................... 177
Marion PragT
Organizing Exegetical Knowledge in Syriac Christianity: Extracts
from Gregory of Nyssa’s Homilies on the Song of Songs in the London Collection (BL Add. 12168) ........................................................ 187
James F. WellingTon
Love Intensified: Exploring Gregory of Nyssa’s Noetic-Erotic Revolution .................................................................................................... 199
Anthony vella
Gregory of Nyssa’s Understanding of Humility and Poverty in his First
Homily on the Beatitudes .................................................................... 211
Francisco BasTiTTa harrieT
Compassion to Become Equal: The Shaping of a Virtue in Gregory
of Nyssa’s De Beatitudinibus V ......................................................... 219
Alexander L. aBeCina
Power in Weakness: Pneumatology in Gregory of Nyssa’s De virginitate, Chapters 7-13 ........................................................................... 231
Valentina marCheTTo
‘One Heart and One Soul’ (Acts 4:32). Past and Present Unity in Basil
of Caesarea .......................................................................................... 243
Table of Contents
VII
Thomas D. TaTTerfield
Sympatheia and the Body of Christ in Basil of Caesarea .................. 255
Sergey TrosTyanskiy
Units, Limits and the Order of Nature: Basil the Great’s Theory of
Time and Creation ............................................................................... 261
Colten Cheuk-Yin Yam
Basil on the Souls................................................................................ 283
María Alejandra valdés garCía
La thesis en las homilías De invidia y Adversus eos qui irascuntur
de Basilio de Cesarea .......................................................................... 295
Arnaud PerroT
Basil and Amelius ............................................................................... 305
Lillian I. larsen
Evagrius in the Classroom .................................................................. 313
Rubén pereTó rivas
Attention (προσοχή) in Evagrius of Pontus....................................... 333
Stuart E. Parsons
The Coherence of Evagrius’ Scholia on Proverbs ............................. 341
Kelly E. harrison
Recipes for Passion: Understanding the Role of Representations,
Thoughts and Demons in the Event of Passion in Evagrius Ponticus.. 353
Daniel G. opperwall
Chained to Grievance, Rotten to the Roots: Evagrius and John Cassian
on Sadness ........................................................................................... 367
Basil and Amelius
Arnaud perroT, Université François-Rabelais,
Centre d’études supérieures de la Renaissance, Tours, France
aBsTraCT
Basil’s Homily on the word: ‘In the beginning was the Word (John 1:1)’ alludes to the
admiration of the pagans for the prologue of the Gospel of John and to how pagans are
supposed to have made use of this text in their own writings. Behind these words, one
can easily recognize an allusion to the Neoplatonist Amelius, Plotinus’ senior disciple.
Basil’s Neoplatonism has been the subject of much debate, especially as far as his direct
knowledge of Plotinus is concerned. In this article, I will show that Basil has certainly
not read Amelius, but, exactly like the other Christian writers who referred to Amelius’
testimony, is dependent here on Eusebius’ Evangelical Preparation and the way the
Palestinian bishop had more or less coined Amelius’ testimony on the value of John’s
Prologue.
Basil’s Homily On the word: ‘In the Beginning was the Word (John 1:1)’,
of uncertain date,1 deals, in a few lines, with the alleged pagan admiration for
1
The critics, following Jean Bernardi, La prédication des Pères Cappadociens: le prédicateur
et son auditoire, Publications de la Faculté des Lettres et Sciences humaines de Montpellier 30
(Paris, 1968), 86-7, usually date the homily from the early years of Basil’s episcopacy. The reason
can be summed up as follows: preaching the doctrine, Basil does not give a special place to the
Spirit, which would constitute a clue for a dating before the Pneumatomachian crisis or before
the liturgical incident of St Eupsychios, thus before September 372. However, this argument cannot be regarded as indisputable, inasmuch as the commented lemma does not require an elaborate
discourse on the third Person of the Trinity. Therefore, Basil could have preached this homily at
almost any time, even at a time when his pneumatological doctrine was no less developed than
in other texts, such as the homily On Faith, often interpreted as a ‘final synthesis’ of Basil’s
Trinitarian doctrine. A study of the exegesis does not prove to be of great help for the dating.
Indeed, if it is true that Basil uses John 1:1 in Contra Eunomium, published ca. 364/365, the presence of an antisabellian theme in our homily does not necessarily mean that our homily shows an
enrichment of the polemical potentialities of John’s exegesis. Such an ‘evolutionist’ point of view
is supported by volker h. Drecoll, Die Entwicklung der Trinitätslehre des Basilius von Cäsarea:
Sein Weg vom Homöusianer zum Neonizäner, Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte 66
(Göttingen, 1996), 165. But, here again, one can object that antimodalist arguments were strictly
useless against Eunomius and, therefore, it is possible to imagine that the Contra Eunomium, in
order to fit with its only target, has reduced the range of attacks allowed by this verse. On the
other hand, the antiarian use of John 1:1 cannot be used as a proof that the homily was performed
towards the time of composition of Basil’s Contra Eunomium – for such a position, see Jean Gribomont, ‘In Tomum 31 Introductio’, Patrologia Graeca cursus completus XXXI (repr. Turnhout,
Studia Patristica CXV, 305-311.
© Peeters Publishers, 2021.
306
a. perroT
the Prologue of the Gospel of John and how pagans are supposed to have made
use of this text in their own writings.
These words, I know that many who are outside the doctrine of truth and pride themselves
on the wisdom of the world have admired (θαυμάσαντας) them and have dared to mix
(ἐγκαταμίξαι) them with their own compositions. For the devil is a thief (κλέπτης) and
divulges our mysteries to his interpreters. (PG 31, 472C)
Basil makes this statement at the beginning of the homily. The Cappadocian
thus seeks to arouse the attention of the audience for difficult and controversial
matters, the Theology of the Son (τὰ περὶ τῆς θεολογίας τοῦ Υἱοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ,
473A), by creating a competition between Christians and pagans, an attitude
familiar to him in a homiletical context.2 Neither Celsus nor Porphyry can, of
course, be identified as these admirers of John’s words since, as far as we
know, their approach consisted in contesting, in one way or another, the status
of Logos attributed to Jesus.3 Behind these words, one can however recognize
an allusion to the famous case of the Neoplatonist Amelius, Plotinus’ senior
disciple. It is well known that Basil’s Neoplatonism has caused much debate,
especially as far as Plotinus is concerned. Some critics, such as Paul Henry in
the 1930s, have tried to demonstrate that, at every step of his career, Basil shows
direct knowledge of Plotinus’ work.4 But it is far from clear that Basil has
always directly used Plotinus’ writings, when a Plotinian influence can be
suggested.5 What is clearer, however, is that Basil had certainly never read
Amelius, but is here dependent, just like the other Christian authors who have
used Amelius’ commentary on John, on Eusebius’ Evangelical Preparation and
the way Eusebius has framed the so-called ‘testimony’ of the Platonist.
1965), 5 – since the antiarian controversy is a constant of the Corpus basilianum. To sum up, this
both antiarian and antisabellian homily does not contain any guiding elements that would allow
us to situate it precisely in a chronology of Basil’s works. For a commentary on this homily, see
Arnaud Perrot, ‘Basile de Césarée’, in Matthieu Cassin (ed.), Histoire de la littérature grecque
chrétienne, IV (Paris, 2019), 309-16.
2
Emmanuel Amand de Mendieta, ‘The Official Attitude of Basil of Caesarea as a Christian
Bishop towards Greek Philosophy and Science’, in Derek Baker (ed.), The Orthodox Churches
and the West, Studies in Church History 13 (Oxford, 1976), 25-49.
3
Note Celsus’ polemics against Christ as Logos: Jesus should have illuminated everything,
like the sun; moreover, he is not a pure and holy Logos, but a man ignominiously led to punishment.
See Robert Bader, Der Alethes Logos des Kelsos, Tübinger Beiträge zur Altertumswissenschaft 33
(Stuttgart, Berlin, 1940), fragment 2, 30 and fragment 2, 31. Porphyry in the treatise Against
the Christians states, drawing upon stoic concepts, that if Jesus is Logos uttered, he cannot be
substantial, and if he is Logos internal to God, he has not descended from the divinity. See Adolf
von Harnack, Porphyrius, Gegen die Christen: 15 Bücher: Zeugnisse, Fragmente und Referate,
Abhandlungen der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische
Klasse 1 (Berlin, 1916), fragment 86.
4
Paul Henry, Études plotiniennes, I. Les états du texte de Plotin (Paris, 1938), 159-96.
5
See John M. Rist, ‘Basil’s Neoplatonism: Its Background and Nature’, in Paul J. Fedwick (ed.),
Basil of Caesarea, Christian, Humanist, Ascetic. A Sixteen-Hundredth Anniversary Symposium
(Toronto, 1981), I 270-325.
Basil and Amelius
307
The fragment of Amelius cited by Eusebius is as follows:
And it was this Word, the eternal being to whom all that exists owes its origin, as
Heraclitus himself would have said (see fr. B1 Diels-Kranz), of which, yes by Zeus!
(νὴ Δία), the Barbarian says that, placed in the rank and dignity of principle, he is
turned to God and that he is God himself, that through him absolutely everything has
entered into existence, […] and that he falls (πίπτειν) into the bodies and that, having
clothed (ἐνδυσάμενον) himself in flesh, takes on the appearance of man (φαντάζεσθαι
ἄνθρωπον),6 thus showing the greatness of his nature; and that, evidently, once
destroyed, is again deified and God, as he was before descending into the body, the
flesh, the man.7
Amelius’ text is neither a quotation from John 1:1-4, nor a commentary, but
a paraphrase which consists in a re-reading of the contents of the first verses
of John in Platonic terms. According to the interpretation of Hermann Dörrie8
and Luc Brisson,9 which is accepted by John Dillon,10 the ‘Barbarian’ is meant
to describe the procession of the Soul (Logos), instrument of the Intellect
(God), down to the level of the individual human souls who participate in it
and who are associated, in the material realm, with bodies, and then return to
their higher state, after the destruction of the bodies. The process of fall and
rise, or procession and conversion, appears as a cycle, or a succession of
‘moments’, in which the unique, historical character of the event of the Incarnation has clearly disappeared. In this context, the reading of the Prologue does
not specifically deal with Jesus alone. Even if one can note some unusual
stylistic traits in the paraphrase – such as the interjection νὴ Δία – which is a
vigorous, but ambiguous, manifestation of the Platonist, it is unclear whether
Amelius’ reading was favorable or unfavorable to Christians (and what sort of
Christians?), and we have no clue about the precise context in which Amelius
had to quote it, directly or indirectly. At least, it can easily be accepted that it
is absolutely not an orthodox reading of the Prologue of John, whether it is
inspired by the reading of Christians Amelius was fighting against, as some critics have postulated,11 or distorted by the philosopher’s own system.
6
It is not my purpose, in the present article, to discuss Amelius’ so-called ‘Docetism’. This
heresiological category has very little meaning in a Greek context, but it is worth notice that Eusebius does not fear to use, as a proof-text, a text that could be regarded as docetic by Christians.
7
Eusebius, Evangelical Preparation XI 19, 1.
8
Hermann Dörrie, ‘Une exégèse néoplatonicienne du Prologue de l’Évangile de S. Jean (Amélius
chez Eusèbe, Prep. ev. 11, 19.1-4)’, in Jacques Fontaine and Charles Kannengiesser (eds), Epektasis. Mélanges patristiques offerts au cardinal Jean Daniélou (Paris, 1972), 75-8.
9
Luc Brisson, ‘Amélius. Sa vie, son œuvre, sa doctrine, son style’, in Hildegard Temporini
and Wolfgang Haase (eds), Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur
Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung II 36.2 (Berlin, 1987), 793-860.
10
John Dillon, ‘St. John in Amelius’ Seminar’, in Panayiota Vassilopoulou and Stephen
R.L. Clark (eds), Late Antique Epistemology: Other Ways to Truth (New York, 2009), 30-43.
11
L. Brisson has postulated that it was an excerpt from Amelius’ anti-Zostrian (NH VIII, 1)
writings.
308
a. perroT
At any rate, Eusebius, deliberately ignoring this aspect of the problem, has
cut the quotation from its context and has diverted it to serve his own ends by
means of the commentary within which he has framed it. Amelius ‘thought it
proper, according to Eusebius, to mention John the Evangelist’ (ἠξίωσε τοῦ
εὐαγγελιστοῦ Ἰωάννου μνήμην ποιήσασθαι).12 Amelius quotes him ‘highly’
(ἄντικρυς) and ‘with an uncovered head’ (γυμνῇ τῇ κεφαλῇ) (Eusebius alludes,
with a good deal of literary irony, to the attitude of Socrates in Phaedrus, 243b).13
He ‘gives a testimony in favor of his words’ (ἐπιμαρτυρεῖ […] ταῖς φωναῖς
αὐτοῦ)14. Eusebius is, indeed, responsible for the favourable impressions associated with this Platonic use of John 1:1-4. He has isolated and, in doing so,
almost coined the testimonium of Amelius. This is, indeed, the literary origin
of the feeling of admiration shared by ‘many’ pagans to whom Basil alludes in
front of his listeners, with a little bit of rhetorical exaggeration. One pagan was
probably not enough to create a real spirit of zeal for the Johannine prologue.15
That Basil deals with the famous excerpt from Amelius seems to me confirmed
by a short literary appreciation, conveyed through the word ἐγκαταμίξαι, which
may be a way to express metaphorically the process of paraphrase as a phenomenon of fraudulent incorporation.
In Eusebius’ work, the quotation from John’s Prologue is a proof that Plato
and his followers were preceded on the path of truth by the Hebrew sages and that
the Greeks agree with the Hebrews on the essential points of their philosophy.
Amelius, if he is indebted here to Numenius’ doctrine and symphonic exegesis,
more surely thought the exact opposite: the ‘Barbarian’, in his own language,
agreed with the results of Greek philosophy.
Basil rewrites and hardens Eusebius’ perspective. Basil now evokes the
apologetic motive of the diabolic larceny, without quoting, as usual, his intermediary literary source. Indeed, he has the same attitude, for example, when
portraying Josephus’ cannibal mother in a Homily pronounced in a time of
famine and drought, quoted from Origen or Eusebius, but with a less antijuidaic and a more pathetic, social, point of view. Basil’s remark on John 1:1
thus evidences an interesting phenomenon of successive deformations as well
as a case of amplification drawing upon the memory of a distorted excerpt.
12
Evangelical Preparation XI 18, 26.
Ibid. 19, 2.
14
Ibid. 18, 26.
15
The Platonist to whom Augustine refers to in The City of God (X 29, 2), reporting that he
had said that the first lines of the Prologue of John should be written in golden letters on the
pediment of all the churches, is in all likelihood not Amelius: everything (and in particular the
Platonicus’ interest for churches in a Milanese context) suggests that the Platonicus in question
is a Christian Platonist, who may be identified as Marius Victorinus. See Pierre Hadot, Marius
Victorinus, Recherches sur sa vie et ses œuvres (Paris, 1971), 237 and Goulven Madec, ‘Si Plato
viveret… (Augustin, De Vera Religione, 3.3)’, in Néoplatonisme : mélanges offerts à Jean Trouillard,
Les Cahiers de Fontenay 19-22 (Fontenay-aux-Roses, 1981), 233.
13
Basil and Amelius
309
The same phenomenon is observed at various levels among the other
alleged Christian witnesses of Amelius. Eusebius is, as already demonstrated
by many critics, the source of Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Cyril of Alexandria’s
comment on Amelius, each of them using Eusebius’ decontextualized excerpt
according to his own views. Just like Basil, Theodoret underlines Amelius’
admiration for John. ‘A man who has been nourished by the eloquence of
Plato and other philosophers admires so much the theology of the Barbarian’,
Οὕτως ἄρα τὴν τοῦ βαρβάρου θεολογίαν τεθαύμακεν ὁ τῇ Πλάτωνος καὶ
τῶν ἄλλων φιλοσόφων ἐντραφεὶς εὐεπείᾳ (Therapy II 89). After giving the
same quotation as Eusebius, Theodoret rewrites it as if Amelius had made an
orthodox exposition on the doctrine of Logos, appropriating the paraphrase
through his own paraphrase. ‘And he confessed with us (ξυν-) that the Logos
was in the beginning, that He was God, that He was with God, that He created
everything, that He is the cause and the chorege of life for all beings, that for
the salvation of the world he has hidden in a flesh the greatness of his divinity,
and yet unveiled even in the small and thick cloud the nobility of his Father’,
Καὶ ξυνωμολόγησε τὸν λόγον καὶ ἐν ἀρχῇ εἶναι καὶ θεὸν εἶναι καὶ πρὸς
τὸν θεὸν εἶναι καὶ τὰ πάντα πεποιηκέναι καὶ ζωῆς τοῖς ἅπασιν αἴτιον
ὑπάρχειν καὶ χορηγὸν καὶ τῆς τῶν ὅλων ἕνεκα σωτηρίας σαρκὶ μὲν
ξυγκρύψαι τὸ μεγαλοπρεπὲς τῆς θεότητος, ἀποκαλύψαι δὲ ὅμως κἀν τῇ
σμικρᾷ καὶ παχείᾳ νεφέλῃ τὴν πατρῴαν εὐγένειαν (ibid.). Theodoret has
truly ‘re-johannized’ and ‘christianized’ Amelius. Against Julian, Cyril of
Alexandria, showing that some Greek philosophers have known and accepted
the mystery of the Incarnation, talks about Amelius as a philosopher who
‘knows a Logos which became man and agrees with it’, οἶδεν ἐνανθρωπήσαντα λόγον καὶ τοῦτο ὁμολογεῖ (Against Julian VIII 44), ignoring, deliberately or not, that the Platonic procession is not a ‘historical’ and unique event.
Eusebius, Theodoret and Cyril, because of the agreement which they claim to
find between the Scriptures and Platonism, think to prove the rationality of
the Christian faith.
By contrast, Basil seems to be the poorest. He has used Eusebius’ excerpt
neither as a proof-text, nor as a text; neither has he put forward Amelius’ name
as an argument from authority – Amelius here has absolutely no authority –,
reducing it instead to a pastoral tool, able to excite the ζῆλος of the audience.
If pagans inspired by the devil have paid attention to John’s words, how much
more must Christians, inspired by the Spirit, listen to and study the words ‘In
the Beginning was the Word’.
At this point, it is however worth picking up on a little philological irony.
Before examining with extreme care the theological content of the first two
verses of John’s Prologue, Basil, following a method he often favors when
dealing with theological doctrine, practices a form of Platonic excusatio on the
unattainable character (ἀνέφικτον) of God, a variant of the ἀξίως λέγειν of
eulogy rhetoric, so to speak. At the very moment when pagans are accused of
310
a. perroT
being thieves, Platonic rhetoric, mixing accents that ultimately go back to the
Symposium and the Republic, is itself retrieved by the Christian speaker.
Καὶ τίς οὕτως ἀναισθησίαν νοσῶν, ὥστε τοιοῦτον κάλλος ἐννοίας καὶ βάθος δογμάτων οὕτως ἀνέφικτον μὴ οὐχὶ καταπλαγῆναι, καὶ ἐπιθυμῆσαι αὐτῶν τῆς ἀληθοῦς
καταλήψεως; Ἀλλὰ γὰρ οὐχὶ τὸ θαυμάσαι τὰ καλὰ δύσκολον, ἀλλὰ τὸ ἐν ἀκριβεῖ
κατανοήσει γενέσθαι τῶν θαυμασθέντων, τοῦτο χαλεπὸν καὶ δυσέφικτον. Ἐπεὶ καὶ
τὸν ἥλιον τοῦτον τὸν αἰσθητὸν οὐδεὶς μέν ἐστιν ὃς οὐχ ὑπερεπαινεῖ, τὸ μέγεθος
αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸ κάλλος, καὶ τῶν ἀκτίνων τὴν συμμετρίαν, καὶ τὸ ἀποστίλβον αὐτοῦ
φῶς κατασπαζόμενος· ἐὰν μέντοι βιαιότερον φιλονεικήσῃ τῷ κύκλῳ ἀντεξάγειν
ἑαυτοῦ τὰς τῶν ὀμμάτων βολάς, οὐ μόνον οὐ κατόψεται τὰ περισπούδαστα, ἀλλὰ
καὶ τὴν ἀκρίβειαν τῆς ὄψεως προσδιαφθείρας οἰχήσεται. Τοιοῦτόν τί μοι δοκῶ τὴν
διάνοιαν πάσχειν, τὴν φιλονεικοῦσαν ἀκριβῆ ποιεῖσθαι τῶν προκειμένων ῥημάτων
τὴν ἐξέτασιν.
And who suffers from insensibility to the point of not being struck by such beauty of
thought and so unattainable a depth of doctrine, and of not desiring their true understanding? But admiring beautiful things is not difficult; having a precise understanding
of what we have admired, however, is difficult and hard to achieve. For if there is no
one who does not praise this sensitive sun, charmed by its greatness and beauty, the
equality of its rays and the luminous brilliancy of its light, if, however, a man wishes
to fix with more effort his looks on the disk, not only will this man not see the much
desired object, but in addition his visual acuity will be severely impaired! That is almost
what my thought suffers, in my opinion, when I wish to offer the precise exegesis of
the words in question. (PG 31, 472C-473A)
In this rhetorical context, the effort to unfold the content of the proposed
ῥήματα is assimilated to the pain caused by the contemplation of the sun
(472C-473A). While ordinarily Basil qualifies the properties of the scriptural
λέξις in terms of utility, lack of literary elaboration and brevity, through the
initial Platonic eulogy of John, whose words are ‘too great (μείζονα) for the
ear’, just like the Good according to Socrates in the famous analogy of the
Sun in the Republic, and ‘too sublime (ὑψηλότερα) for any spirit’ (472B),
Basil intersects, in a very condensed way, with Origen’s Commentary on John
who considers that the theological depth of John’s beginning is exceptional,
even in comparison with the other Gospels. However, precisely when rejecting the Platonic appropriation of John, Basil appropriates Platonic language
and rhetoric. There is a correct, even silent, form of cultural appropriation, as
well as an illegitimate one, as it seems!
This reversal of situation has nonetheless given rise to an interesting posterity:
the first anonymous scholia preceding the Dionysian corpus, the so-called scholia
De philosophis paganis whose author may be none other than John Philoponus,16
16
See Beate R. Suchla, Corpus Dionysiacum: Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita. IV/I, Ioannis
Scythopolitani prologus et scholia in Dionysii Areopagitae librum ‘De divinis nominibus’, cum
additamentis interpretum aliorum, Patristische Texte und Studien 62 (Berlin, Boston, 2011), 43.
Basil and Amelius
311
explicitly makes use of this passage as an argument from authority to overthrow
the real relationship between the writings of Proclus the philosopher and those
of the ‘Blessed Dionysius’.
It must be known that some of the pagan philosophers, and Proclus in particular, frequently make use of the doctrines of the blessed Dionysius, and even literally of some
of his own expressions. This suggests that the most ancient philosophers of Athens,
having appropriated Dionysius’ treatises, as the author relates in this book, kept them
hidden to appear themselves as the fathers of Dionysius’ divine discourses. And it is
by a providential disposition of God that the present work appeared to accuse them of
vain glory and laziness. And that it is a habit of the pagans to appropriate our doctrines,
the divine Basil teaches it in his homily on ‘In the beginning was the Word’, where he
says in express terms: These words, I know that many who are outside the doctrine of
truth and pride themselves on the wisdom of the world have admired them and have dared
to insert them in their own writings. For the devil is a thief and divulges our mysteries to
his interpreters.17
Here, Proclus is, to the Christian scholiast’s eye, a thief, because, as saint
Basil said, philosophers are frequently thieves. So what have we learnt from
this story? First: preaching is one thing, philology is another. Second: the thief
is not always the one we initially suspected.
17
For a French translation see Henri-Dominique Saffrey, ‘Le lien le plus objectif entre le
Pseudo-Denys et Proclus’, in Roma, magistra mundi. Itineraria culturae medievalis: Mélanges
offerts au Père L.E. Boyle à l’occasion de son 75e anniversaire, Textes et études du Moyen Âge
10 (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1998), 791-810, reprinted in H.-D. Saffrey, Le néoplatonisme après Plotin,
Histoire des doctrines de l’Antiquité classique 24 (Paris, 2000), 239-52.