Volume 17, Issue 3

Fortunatianus, who was bishop of Aquileia in the middle of the 4th century, has not received much scholarly attention. His commentary on the Gospels, which was written under Constantius II (337-361) and used by later writers such as Jerome, was thought to be lost, apart from three short excerpts which were discovered only in the 20th century. However, a (nearly) complete copy of Fortunatianus’ allegedly lost commentary on the Gospels was found in 2012. The present article takes this discovery as an occasion to collect and discuss all the extant sources which are relevant for reconstructing the biography and career of bishop Fortunatianus of Aquileia. Furthermore, it discusses Fortunatianus’ theological positions in the dogmatic controversies of the 4th century on the basis of the full text of his Gospel commentary for the first time (which makes it possible to reject earlier conjectures about his supposed inclinations to “Arianism”). Finally, this article addresses in an appendix the reliability of Jerome as witness to Fortunatianus’ life and work.

This article identifies a parchment leaf kept in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow as a fragment from the Sahidic version of the Life of Shenoute (Bibliotheca Hagiographia Orientalis 1074-1078; clavis coptica 0461), a hagiographical work about the archimandrite of the White Monastery attributed to his successor, Besa. The fragment offers a portion of the text which has survived only in the Arabic and Ethiopic versions. The paleographical inspection indicates that the dismembered leaf belonged to the White Monastery codex MONB.WV. Besides the Moscow fragment, this article adds two other paleographically related fragments to the White Monastery codex MONB.WV.

Although I have repeatedly published about the so-called Fayum Fragment (P.Vindob.G) 2325 - a fragment of a potential, non-canonical gospel, I have previously only briefly touched on the two lexemes ἀ λεκτρυών and κοκκύζω used for the cock’s crow. In the present study, I will offer a more detailed presentation of their usage and provide a more thorough analysis of the question, which expressions for the cock and its crow were common in Greek in various areas and situations. The result comes as a surprise: it is not the usage in the text of the Fayum Fragment that is striking and peculiar in comparison with the rest of Greek literature, but rather the fact that the canonical gospels consistently use ἀ λέκτωρ with φωνέω. Furthermore, the term hapax legomenon for ἀ λεκτρυών and κοκκύζω is a dubious and problematic attribute because it suggests a certain particularity, which, if at all valid, is limited at best.

Justin Martyr probably wrote his Second Apology as a private petition (βιβλίδιον, libellus ) to the Roman authorities, conveying his defence on behalf of oppressed Christians. But that does not explain the heavily theological/philosophical content of chapters 4-13, including Justin’s detailed arguments against Stoic cosmo-theology in these chapters. The 2 Apology also contains a reference to a previous public debate between Justin himself and a philosopher called Crescens, whom Justin calls a “Cynic,” and who has therefore been so identified ever since. The present essay argues that the content of Justin’s philosophical/theological discourse in 2 Apology 4-13 is precisely based on his previous encounter with Crescens. Moreover, it is argued that Crescens was not a Cynic. Rather, he was a Stoic philosopher, thus belonging to one of the two most prominent philosophical schools of the time-the other being (Middle) Platonism. This conclusion places Justin, a former Platonist, at the heart of the ongoing debates among the philosophical schools, the foremost of which, according to Justin, was Christianity.

This article attempts to describe the origins of the Melitian Schism (ca. 303-311). Special attention will be given to the conflict between Melitius and Peter as its cause. As an appendix, I offer the first German translation of the so-called “Fundamentalurkunden” of the Melitian Schism.

This article offers an in-depth study of Asterius’ often neglected Liber ad Renatum monachum in relation to its compositional context and other similar writings from Late Antiquity. It starts with a thorough discussion about the possible date, author, and place of the Liber ad Renatum monachum. One will see that the context of the writing was the (early) fifth century, but also that the treatise cannot be connected to a place more precisely than the Latin West. In the second part of this article, a closer look is given to the ascetic content of the Liber ad Renatum monachum. Although the treatise has many topics worth discussing, the present authors have chosen to direct their attention to the rather unknown late antique ascetic practice of syneisaktism, a practice in which an ascetic man and a virgin lived together unmarried with the (unofficial) promise to remain chaste. For this reason the final part of this article is wholly dedicated to the question of how Asterius used and reworked a centuries-old tradition of arguments against syneisaktism. The analysis extends over a wide range of polemical writings, starting from Asterius’ proven sources (e.g., Jerome’s Epistulae and the anonymous De singularitate clericorum) to sources previously not connected with this work (e.g., John Chrysostom’s Adversus eos qui apud se habent subintroductas virgines and Quod regulares feminae viris cohabitare non debeant, and several works of the Cappadocians).

The present paper examines the criteria by which the Christian communities of Syria demarcated themselves from the pagan society, on the basis of the Didascalia Apostolorum, a „church order” of the third century. The article shows that the theoretical Christian monotheism had countless practical consequences for the daily lives of the early Christians. The ban on idolatry, which had initially led Christianity into isolation, became an important pillar of the new Christian identity. From this perspective, the following areas of delimitation are examined: baptism as a criterion of delimitation from the pagan world; the rejection of pagan literature; the mixed marriages between Christians and pagans; balnea mixta etc. The touchstone of the delimitation criteria is the Bible with its provisions against idolatry and immorality. The boundary between the two antique religions appears in daily life to be an area in which common life was possible, rather than a very sharp line.

This article reconstructs the context of the conflict between Severus of Antioch and Peter of Apamea concerning the ordination of Leontius by Severus, known through Severus, Select letters 6,1,5. Peter had good reasons to be irked by the actions of his patriarch, but both faced the same difficulty: finding good and trustworthy clergy for their embattled sees. Severus’ response to Peter in the letter should not be taken at face value and surely not as a testimony to the strict application of canon law: the letter has all the features of late ancient legal argument: it is rhetorical, seeks to redefine the issue at hand in Severus’ favour, and deploys a particular interpretation of the church canons within an appeal to wider principles. Read against the grain, the letter provides enough indications to believe that Severus had indeed overstepped the boundaries of the admissible.