An Apology for the Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity:Eustratius Presbyter of Constantinople, On the State of Souls after Death (CPG 7522)*
Toward the end of the sixth century, Eustratius, a leading presbyter of Constantinople, refuted a series of arguments which threatened to undermine both the cult of saints and the church's ritual care for the souls of the dead. Based in part on more scientific and materialist models of causality, along with the concern to protect the sovereign activity of the divine, Eustratius' opponents denied the ability of dead souls to involve themselves in, or be affected by, the affairs of the living. However, rather than reject the then widespread phenomena of saintly apparitions, Eustratius' critics argued that they were in fact produced by a divine power simulating the forms of dead martyrs and saints. Eustratius' refutation of these arguments applies the language of contemporary christology to the cult of saints in order to develop a theological anthropology and eschatology commensurate with ritual practice. Eustratius' work, and the arguments of his opponents, which have never been the focus of a major study, are here considered in detail, and this paper suggests that the views of both parties anticipate respectively the iconophilic and iconoclastic theologies of later centuries.
The cult of saints has provoked considerable criticism throughout the history of Christianity, although Byzantine Iconoclasm and the Protestant Reformation have attracted the greater share of attention and study. This [End Page 267] paper considers a largely forgotten challenge to the cult of saints that erupted during the uncertain twilight of the emperor Justinian's much-vaunted Golden Age. Though less spectacular than later outbursts, the sixth-century challenge was important enough to be identified and carefully refuted by a Constantinopolitan presbyter called Eustratius (fl. ca. 583; d. after 602), whose lengthy and learned apology On the State of Souls after Death forms the focus of this study.
A priest of the Great Church of Hagia Sophia, Eustratius was a disciple of the patriarch Eutychius, who presided famously over the condemnation of the "Three Chapters" (i.e., Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and Ibas of Edessa) at the Council of Constantinople in 553. When Eutychius was later removed from office for resisting the emperor's burgeoning aphthartodocetism, Eustratius accompanied his teacher into exile. Before composing his apology for the cult of saints, Eustratius had been preoccupied with the cult of the lately dead Eutychius, principally through the propagation of a written vita, and as a hagiographer and presbyter of the official church he had much at stake in the larger controversy.1
Eustratius' apology was endorsed in the ninth century by the iconophile patriarch Photius, who praised the clarity of its argument while at the same time criticizing the somewhat commonplace character of its literary style.2 The editio princeps, which remains the sole published version of [End Page 268] this work, was printed in Rome in 1655 by the Greco-Catholic theologian Leo Allatius in a split-page format with the Greek text and a Latin translation juxtaposed in facing columns.3 The Latin translation was later reprinted, without the Greek text, by J.-P. Migne in 1841.4 Allatius' edition, which reproduces the ligatures and flourishes of late Byzantine paleography, is somewhat difficult of access, and Eustratius' apology has consequently been overlooked in much of the relevant secondary literature.5 In what follows, I provide a detailed exposition and analysis of this neglected work which, as will be seen, is a witness to deeply contested views concerning the fate of the soul after death and to the critical impact that such views had on the cult of saints in late antiquity. Before turning to the text, however, it will be helpful to situate Eustratius' work within its larger historical and theological context.6
The nature of the soul, its relation to the body, and its fate after death are subjects that, despite their importance, were never authoritatively defined or systematically organized in the late antique period. This lacuna provided an opportunity for the free play of the imaginative, the visionary, and the superstitious, as a result of which one may find any number of psychologies and eschatologies strewn about somewhat carelessly across [End Page 269] the late antique religious landscape.7 Thus, in a celebrated debate about the soul, Gregory of Nyssa and his sister Macrina felt compelled, despite centuries of sustained philosophical inquiry on the subject, to articulate basic principles and definitions, acutely conscious of the fact that "different authors have offered different descriptions of the soul, each defining it as he chooses," and that, with respect to the soul's structure and faculties, "most people are still in doubt and hold unstable and diverse opinions about them."8 In addition to the bewildering diversity of the available philosophical paradigms, advances in the studies of medicine and physiology, as we shall see below, further complicated received opinions about the interaction of soul and body, leaving late antique Christians with a confusing and contradictory collection of texts and traditions from which to draw.
In response to these philosophical and scientific conundra, Christian thinkers turned to the liturgical rites and traditions of their communities as a source for their theological thinking, thereby enacting a critical intervention of practice into theory. More precisely, theory was made to follow practice inasmuch as the ritual care of the dead, along with the cult of saints and relics, necessitated a rather specific set of theological commitments concerning the nature of human beings and the fate of the soul after death. From these devotional first principles, several corollaries were deduced: the soul's survival after its separation from the body at death; its susceptibility to the influence of the church's prayers; the ability of the souls of dead saints to involve themselves in the affairs of the living; and the intimate and abiding unity of such souls with the scattered fragments of their bodies. When, for example, Macrina argued that the departed soul exists in a dimension without spatial extension, and can as a result abide even with the most minute and widely dispersed of its bodily remains and somehow remain whole, it seems clear that the context of her remarks is the cult of relics, for which her argument provides a philosophical justification.9 [End Page 270]
The inherited apparatus of cult, however, did not preclude the emergence of alternative schools of thought which frequently contested and contradicted the practices of the official church. Based on a more unitive, materialist notion of the human person as irreducibly embodied, 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, or be affected by the intentions and activities of the church on earth. On the contrary, with the death and dissolution of their corporeal frames, the souls of the dead (sainted or otherwise) were said to be largely inert, having lapsed into a state of lethargy and oblivion. Still others argued more radically for the outright death of the soul which was said to perish with the body, although not without the hope of being called back into existence together with the body on the day of resurrection. These rival eschatologies variously eliminated the need for prayers, liturgies, and memorial offerings for the dead. By the same token, they nullified the cult of saints and the efficacy of relics, effectively debasing the church's agency in the earthly economy of the afterlife.
Variations on these themes existed alongside the views of the official church until the sixth century when they were resoundingly denounced and rigorously refuted by Eustratius.10 While it is difficult to assess the arguments of Eustratius' opponents, which survive only as fragments in [End Page 271] the context of his refutation, it is clear that they denied any kind of activity or agency to the souls of dead saints. However, what makes their position so peculiar is that, rather than reject the reality of saintly apparitions as such, they sought instead to account for them on the basis of an entirely different explanatory model. Both sides accepted the phenomenological surface, as it were, of saintly apparitions, but whereas Eustratius saw such apparitions as having their direct ontological source within the persons of the saints themselves, his opponents argued that they were more like visual metaphors the latent content of which was not the soul of a dead saint, but the absolute power of divinity itself. We shall return to these arguments in greater detail as we embark upon our analysis of the text. It would be impossible to accommodate all the elements of Eustratius' rich and lengthy apology in the space of this short study, and I will therefore gesture only toward the most significant features of this unique and fascinating work.
Eustratius Presbyter of Constantinople, on the State of Souls After Death
Eustratius begins his treatise by setting forth the views of his opponents, whom he describes as "certain men who are trained in arguments, and who wish to philosophize about the souls of human beings" (2.340-41).11 As noted above, these thinkers contested the church's claim that the souls of the dead could involve themselves in, or be affected by, the affairs of the living, and they consequently rejected all manifestations of supernatural powers save those emanating directly from God. According to Eustratius, these philosophers taught that "human souls, after their departure from their bodies, are inactive
," and (saintly or otherwise) can in no way whatsoever "appear
to the living in their own substance or existence"
.12 [End Page 272] Instead, Eustratius' opponents argued that a "divine power
simulates their form
and appears as the souls of various saints in states of activity
."13 The souls themselves, however, are secreted away in a "certain place"
, and being deprived of their material bodies are not able to appear on earth (2.341). Indeed, the argument continues, even the souls of living saints are spatially circumscribed and thus do not actually appear in dreams to distant sleepers who behold instead a "certain divine grace"
appearing in the form of the saint (16.448-49).14
Eustratius' response to these assertions is carefully woven together from an impressive assortment of scriptural verses, patristic texts, and saints' lives, all of which he cites with exacting precision and handles with singular felicity of touch.15 Responding to the central charge that the [End Page 273] souls of the dead are "incapable of activity" 16 (11.396; 402), Eustratius asserts that human souls are "simple, intelligible, noetic, incorporeal […] and ever-moving," and he argues that these qualities enable the soul to exist independently of the body and to remain active after death (6.353; 367).17 As a result, and contrary to the philosophers, Eustratius insists that the souls of the saints are even more active in death than they were in life, having transcended the spatial and temporal restrictions of the body (14.430-32; cf. 16.451).
Despite the transcendental tenor of these remarks, it would be misleading to view Eustratius' psychology as mere Platonism.18 For Eustratius, the apparitions and activities of saintly souls are by no means natural phenomena, but instead occur only within and through the greater reality and activity of God (16.448f.). Such apparitions are always exceptional. Their subjects can only be exceptional persons, appearing for exceptional reasons, [End Page 274] and only in accordance with God's power and purpose (16.451), as was the case, for example, with the appearance of Moses and Elijah at the Transfiguration of Christ (cf. Matt 17.3), a decisive proof-text which Eustratius exegetes at great length (10.383-88). The souls of saints are thus active after death but only in virtue of divine synergy, apart from which they can do nothing (14.429). The union and cooperation of human and divine energies in the activity of the saints is developed on several levels and forms the central argument of Eustratius' apology.19 The language of energeia undoubtedly reflects the christological vocabulary of the sixth century, while at the same time looking forward to the monoenergistic and monothelite controversies of the seventh. What is new, of course, is Eustratius' use of such language in the context of theological anthropology and the cult of the saints, a subject to which we shall return below.
In addition to their active cooperation with God, the souls of departed saints are also on intimate terms with angels who like them are noetic beings of a bodiless and spiritual nature.20 Souls and angels alike subsist within the greater reality of God, a reality which focuses and directs their compassionate attention toward the world in which they work actively for human salvation (4.347; cf. 9.377). The seamless coordination of divine, angelic, and human activity is a theme that Eustratius develops throughout the apology and appears to be something of a concession to the arguments of his opponents. Indeed, Eustratius seems thus far to share, or at least to have been sympathetic to, his opponents' concern for the primary role of God in the production of the miraculous and the [End Page 275] strictly relative agency of the saints. In effect, the "rival" explanatory models are not mutually exclusive to the extent that both seek to affirm the sovereign freedom of the divine.21 Apart from this somewhat refined theological point, however, there remained an aspect of his opponents' position that Eustratius could in no way countenance.
As mentioned above, Eustratius' opponents had argued that the earthly appearances of saints were actually "phantasms"22 produced by a "divine power" which "simulated the activity of their faces and forms." Such a definition, however, deeply compromised the cult of saints, and Eustratius rejected the theory of divine visionary dissemblance as nothing more than a sign system of real but ultimately absent objects. Moreover, such disguises were deceitful and would make a liar of God (i.e., the "divine power") and "mislead the faithful as to the true nature of their benefactors." It would, in more dramatic terms, reduce the life of the church to a "stage of mimes and jesters...[or to a] theater in which actors don the masks of others, like the 'false faces of the hypocrites' in the Gospel of Matthew (cf. Matt 6.16)" (18.490-91). If Eustratius had earlier rejected the infringement of divine freedom by unqualified saintly activity, he now equally refused to compromise human freedom by reducing it to a mere symbolic function of the divine. [End Page 276]
Eustratius adduces a wealth of texts to support his position on the truthfulness of saintly apparitions, but it is his own theological terminology that calls for comment. Eustratius notes that the souls of saints (as well as the bodiless angels) appear on earth "in their own essence" and "existence"
(9.377; 10.386), in this way overturning the definitions of his opponents. But having stressed the ontological reality of saintly visions, Eustratius proceeds to render them hypostatically concrete by adding that the souls of the saints appear in their "self-subsistent personhood"
(10.387; 13.417) and as "enhypostasized realities"
(13.418). Once again, Eustratius has appropriated the neologisms of sixth-century christology in order to frame a view of theological anthropology, in this case to establish hypostatically the reality and subsistence of the departed saints in God.23
The apology continues with a number of corollary problems related to the cult of saints and the afterlife. Eustratius first responds to a question about the improbable appearances of saintly souls in full military attire galloping into church on horseback (24.518-21).24 This is followed by another question concerning the possibility, which Eustratius rejects, of a [End Page 277] "middle state" for souls that were neither entirely good nor purely evil (25.522-33).25 Eustratius then ponders the nature of Hades as the location of the departed (27[28].534-37), and the treatise concludes with a defense of prayers and liturgies offered on behalf of the dead (28[29].548-61).26
Having examined Eustratius' apology in some detail, we may now consider more closely the possible background and sources of the views which he refutes, and venture to identify their proponents. The arguments which Eustratius encountered concerning the inability of human souls to remain active independently of their bodies bear comparison with the thnetopsychism encountered by Origen in Arabia ("and in the surrounding regions"), noted by Eusebius of Caesarea in his Church History, and later immortalized as a heresy by John of Damascus.27 As its name suggests, thnetopsychism was the belief that the soul was mortal and perished with the body at the time of death, or at best remained confined with the body in the grave. It is unclear to what extent Arabian thnetopsychism is related to the Syriac tradition of the soul's dormition, [End Page 278] 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.28 The Syriac tradition of the soul's "sleep in the dust" (cf. Job 21.26), with its links to the Old Testament and Jewish apocalyptic, provided a counterweight to overly hellenized views of the afterlife, and was canonized at a Nestorian synod in the eighth-century (786-87) presided over by Timothy I (d. 823), who rejected anything else as blatant Origenism.29
In the intellectual climate of the sixth century, these beliefs were reinforced by developments in the studies of medicine and physiology. These studies increasingly acknowledged the mind's close interaction with and dependence on the body, as could be observed, for example, when a severe blow to the head resulted in the loss of memory or in the cessation of movement, a materialist turn that contradicted the church's teaching on the nature of the soul and made nonsense of its institutional dalliance with the dead. In fact, the language used by Eustratius' opponents to describe the soul's inactivity has a number of revealing verbatim links to passages in the Greek medical writers.30 In his attempts to respond to this [End Page 279] rising scientific skepticism, Eustratius was endeavoring to negotiate what John Haldon has described as a tension between "rationalist" and "anti-rationalist" explanatory models which had become sharper and more critically relevant to people's perceptions toward the end of late antiquity. Tensions, for example, between systems of traditional medicine and the healing powers of saints, both of which were flourishing in sixth-century Constantinople, represent divergent explanations of the causes of disease and illness, as well as questions about freedom and causality in both divine and human agency. Haldon argues that Eustratius' apology for the cult of saints is an explicit and interesting attempt to provide a "theologically grounded explanation as well as a justification for what we might dub the 'populist' assumptions underlying miracles." The tensions, however, were to continue and ultimately became one of the "key features" underlying the later "iconoclast criticism of the cult of saints and relics."31
One would like to know more about these learned rationalists, but no trace of their writings has survived and Eustratius never mentions them by name. Nevertheless, a notice in the Library of Photius may provide us with an important clue. In codex 232, Photius describes the work of a certain Stephen Gobar, a mid-sixth-century monophysite theologian who, although otherwise unknown, was in 1923 warmly embraced by Adolf von Harnack in an exuberant study published in the Harvard Theological Review. Based on the remarks of Photius-with which Harnack concurs-Gobar [End Page 280] appears to have been an Aristotelian rationalist closely aligned with the school of John Philoponus. Gobar's work, which is no longer extant, exposed inaccuracies in the church calendar and (to Harnack's delight) sought to undermine the authority of the church fathers by juxtaposing contradictory passages from their works.32 Many of these passages deconstruct received opinions about the nature of the soul and the afterlife, such as the assertion that the soul is incorporeal and not subject to bodily shapes, or that the spirit which God breathed into Adam (cf. Gen 2.7) was temporal and finite, or that after death the soul departs neither from the body nor from the grave, and receives no benefit from the prayers, sacrifices and alms offered on its behalf.33 These ideas bring us very close to the arguments refuted by Eustratius, and we may surmise that, if not from Gobar himself, then it may have been from those close to his circle that the cult of saints came under question in late sixth-century Constantinople.
Conclusion
As a presbyter of Saint Sophia, a building whose magnificent architecture was rivaled only by its unparalleled collection of relics, and as the disciple and hagiographer of the sainted patriarch Eutychius, Eustratius was deeply invested in the ritual care of the dead and the cult of the saints. While Eustratius knew that some souls needed the mercy of tending, he also knew that other souls required discipline and punishment, and at the Council of Constantinople in 553, his mentor Eutychius damned the [End Page 281] memories of rival theologians34 who, despite the fact that they had been dead in some cases for hundreds of years, had apparently lost none of their vitality. Clearly, neither the church's friends nor her enemies could ever be allowed to perish completely.
In his apology for the cult of the saints, and for the larger tradition that it represented, Eustratius drew creatively on the language of contemporary christology in order to articulate a theory of theological anthropology commensurate with ritual practice. As we have seen, this was not simply a philosophical or physiological debate about the relationship obtaining between the body and the soul, although those discussions were certainly influential.35 For both Eustratius and his rivals, claims about the souls of human beings were part of a larger system of theistic metaphysics, making this a debate about God's universe and about explanatory schemes for human freedom and activity within it. In this light, Eustratius' grounding of human energy within the greater energy of God anticipates the theology of Maximus the Confessor (ca. 580-662), who had an abiding concern for the structure of human willing, for the union without confusion of divine-human activity, and for the freedom and activity of the saints in the eschaton.36 [End Page 282]
In response to the modalism of a single divine power appearing in the fantastic shifting forms of saints, Eustratius maintained that the dialogue of persons could not be reduced to an imaginary depiction of the relation between dissembling modalities. On the contrary, such visionary experiences were to be taken at "face value," that is to say, as genuine epiphanies of a transfigured human presence, the revelation of a unique human face bearing a specific personal name (14.411-18). It is worth mentioning that Eustratius' thinking finds a measure of support in modern studies which have emphasized the informing centrality of vision in the phenomenology of mystical experience. It has been widely acknowledged, for example, that that which is experienced by the mystic is mediated by meanings that accrue from perception itself. One cannot, in other words, isolate the "essence" of a vision in separation from its sensory form, or disengage the act of visual experience from interpretation, as Eustratius' opponents endeavored to do, for in a very fundamental sense perception is already a hermeneutical act.37
To solidify these claims within his own theological context, Eustratius turned to the language of prosopon and hypostasis, which he used to support the irreducibility of human persons as real actors and agents in the integrity of their concrete particularities. The use of christological language as a template for anthropology is significant, and reminds us that Maximus' model for the "union without confusion" of human and divine activity is itself rooted in the incarnate person of Christ. Just as the two wills in the one hypostasis of Christ are not opposing wills, neither does the natural, hypostatic will of the saint contradict that of God, for it is "no longer the saints who live, but Christ who lives in them" (cf. Gal 2.20). In the lavish christomimeticism of patristic anthropology, every saint becomes another Christ, the archetype of redeemed humanity (cf. Col 1.18; 1 Cor 15.20-22), who as a generous host shares his very likeness with those who have been promised that "they shall be like him" (cf. 1 Jn 3.2). Gregory of Nyssa's remarks about the poor can readily be applied to the saints who, "destitute, afflicted, and ill-treated" (Heb 11.37), "put on the face (prosopon) of our Savior, for the Lord has given them his own face (prosopon) ... so that they may be the stewards of our hope."38
Eustratius' hypostatic particularism, with its theoretical gaze fixed upon [End Page 283] the faces of the holy men and women of late antiquity, would find its aesthetic consummation in the personalist art of the iconophiles, who established specific names and readily discernable iconographic physiognomies for each saint that were directly linked to their hypostases in heaven. For both Eustratius and the later iconophiles, it was the saints themselves who were the active bearers of their own transfigured images.39
Finally, it is worth noting that these various themes-the cult of the saints, and the christology and icon veneration of later centuries-converge within the pages of Vaticanus graecus 511, a celebrated collection of patristic works that was copied in the tenth and eleventh centuries.40 The collection opens with the Life of Maximus the Confessor (PG 90:145B-164C), followed by a number of the Confessor's works dealing with the question of will and energy, notably the Dialogue with Pyrrhus and a scholion on the contested Ps.-Dionysian notion of a "new theandric energy" (PG 91:288-353; 1056B-1060D). These works are followed by an iconophile florilegium by Niketas of Medikion (d. 824);41 the acclamations and the anathemas from the iconophile Synodikon of Orthodoxy (scr. 843 to 920);42 an account of the miraculous image of the face of Christ from Edessa;43 along with a number of anti-heretical catalogues [End Page 284] and handbooks.44 The entire collection culminates and concludes with the text of Eustratius' apology for the cult of the saints, the theological tendencies of which are rendered transparent and magnified powerfully through the lenses of seventh, eighth, and ninth-century christological and iconological developments.
Eustratius' apology awaits a modern critical edition along with a detailed, full-length study. Both will further our understanding of religious and intellectual currents at the end of late antiquity, and illuminate larger patterns within the history and evolution of Christian theology and culture.45 [End Page 285]
Nicholas Constas is Assistant Professor of Theology at Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Footnotes
* An earlier version of this paper was read at the Thirteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies, Oxford, 20 August 1999.
1. Eutychius (b. 512; sed. 552-65; 577-82) was restored under Justin II. The VitaEutychii, written after Eutychius' death in 582, has been edited by Carl Laga in CCG (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992), and is an important source for the history of sixth-century christology; cf. Aloys Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition 2.2, tr. Pauline Allen and John Cawte (Louisville: Westminster, 1995), 467-75. See also Averil Cameron, "Eustratius' Life of Eutychius and the Fifth Ecumenical Council," in Kathegetria. Essays Presented to Joan Hussey for Her Eightieth Birthday, ed. Juliana Chrysostomides (Camberley: Porphyrogenitus, 1988), 225-47; ead., "Models of the Past in the Late Sixth Century: The Life of Eutychius," in Reading the Past in Late Antiquity, ed. Graeme Wilbur Clarke (Rushcutters Bay: Australian National University Press, 1990), 205-23; both reprinted in Averil Cameron, Changing Cultures in EarlyByzantium (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996), vols. 1 and 2. Eustratius also wrote the vita of the Persian saint Golinduch, a female convert to Christianity who was martyred by the Magi, ed. Athanasios Papadopoulos-Kerameus, Analekta HierosolymitikesStachyologias 4 (St. Petersburg: V. Kirsvaoum, 1897), 149-74; cf. Paul Peeters, "Saint Golinduche, Martyre Perse," AB 62 (1944): 80-92; Gerard Garitte, "La Passion géorgienne de Sainte Golinduch," AB 74 (1956): 405-40; and Pauline Allen, EvagriusScholasticus the Church Historian (Leuven: Spicelegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1981), 39-40, 258-59.
2. Photius, Bibliotheca, cod. 171 (ed. René Henry, 2 [Paris: Belles Lettres, 1960], 165-66); cf. Warren Treadgold, The Nature of the Bibliotheca of Photius (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1980), 148, no. 171.
3. Leo Allatius, De Utriusque Ecclesiae Occidentalis atque Orientalis Perpetua inDogmate de Purgatorio Consensu (Rome, 1655), 336-580; for the manuscript tradition, see below, n. 26. See also Thomas Cerbu, "Allatius Lecteur d'Origène," in Les Pères de l'Église au XVIIe siècle, ed. Emmanuel Bury and Bernard Meunier (Paris: Cerf, 1993), 213-24.
4. J.-P. Migne, Theologia Cursus Completus 18 (Paris, 1841): 465-514, a series not to be confused with his celebrated Patrologiae.
5. Exceptions include notices in Jean Gouillard, "Léthargie des âmes et culte des saints: Un plaidoyer inédit de Jean Diacre et Maïstôr," Travaux et Mémoires 8 (1981): 180-81; Allen, Evagrius Scholasticus, 39-40; Brian Daley, The Hope of the EarlyChurch: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 200; Barry Baldwin, ODB 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 754; Gilbert Dagron, "Holy Images and Likeness," DOP 45 (1991): 32-33; idem, "L'ombre d'une doute: L'hagiographie en question, VIe-XIe siècle," DOP 46 (1992): 45-47; John Haldon, "Supplementary Essay," in The Miracles of St. Artemios, ed. Virgil S. Crisafulli and John W. Nesbitt (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 45-46; and Dirk Krausmüller, "God or Angels as Impersonators of Saints: A Belief and its Contexts in the 'Refutation' of Eustratius of Constantinople and in the Writings of Anastasius of Sinai," Gouden Hoorn 6.2 (1998-1999): 5-16, who focuses primarily on Anastasius of Sinai.
6. For an expanded treatment of this context, along with additional references and bibliography, see my "'To Sleep, Perchance to Dream': The Middle State of Souls in Patristic and Byzantine Literature," DOP 55 (2001): 91-124.
7. See, for example, Gregory Nazianzus, whose First Theological Oration 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," Oration 27.10 (ed. Paul Gallay, SC 250 [Paris: Cerf, 1978]: 96). For Eustratius' citations from Nazianzus, see n. 15.
8. Gregory of Nyssa, Dialogue on the Soul and the Resurrection 2; 3 (PG 46:29.61;49.49). In his apology, Eustratius cites this and three other works by Nyssa, for which see n. 15.
9. Ibid., 2 (PG 46:28D-48C); cf. ibid., 6 (46:88C), where, conversely, the soul's affections for carnal pleasure lead to a similar attachment to the body, reducing thesoul to a "shadowy spirit" lurking in the vicinity of its body's grave (cf. Plato, Phaedo 81D). On the cult of relics in fourth-century Cappadocia, see Mario Girandi, Basiliodi Cesarea e il Culto dei Martiri nel IV secolo (Bari: University of Bari, 1990), esp. 165-77 ("Il culto per le relique"). It does not seem wide of the mark to suggest that, in Nyssa's Dialogue, the "soul" under seemingly generic discussion is often, if obliquely, the soul of Basil (or, by anticipation, that of the dying Macrina), whose recent death was, in part, the occasion for this work which begins with the lament that "When Basil, the great saint, had passed over to God from earthly life, he gave the churches a common cause for grief" (PG 46:12A).
10. One detects what appear to be rebuttals of similar criticisms in Theodoret, Curatio 8.10: "The souls of the martyrs traverse the heavens, while their bodies are not obscured by their tombs" (ed. Pierre Canivet, SC 57 [Paris: Cerf, 1958]: 313); Basil of Seleucia, Or. 39: "The power of the saints, who wrought miracles while they were alive, is not buried in the earth after their death, for even though stones conceal their bodies, they are able to rescue those in danger" (PG 85:449); Proclus, hom. 5.1: "Even though their [i.e., the saints] relics are enclosed within tombs, their power over the earth is not restricted" (PG 65:716); and Ps.-Chrysostom, In s. Thomam: "Nothing is able to conceal him [i.e., Thomas], and he is absent from no place...he was buried in a tomb, but rises everywhere like the sun. The relics of this righteous man have conquered the world, and have appeared as more expansive than creation itself" (PG 59:498).
11. Eustratius later characterizes these persons as "those who do not think rightly and who teach that souls are inactive" (4.348), and "who do not accept that a departed soul can return to earth prior to the universal resurrection of bodies" (8.369-70); or as "opponents of the truth" (cf. 2 Tim 2.25)(7.364), and "contradictors"
(11.400; 12.409; cf. 16.459), and again more scornfully as
(9.376),
(9.381), and
(14.425); references are to chapter and page number in Allatius' edition. For more on Eustratius' opponents, see below, n. 14.
12. Eustratius' opponents, no doubt with some sarcasm, asked whether or not "the souls of actively working saints continue to receive wages for their work." In response, Eustratius acknowledged that saintly souls cannot "engage in struggles" or be "either defeated or crowned again" apart from their bodies, but he maintained that saints nevertheless have the gift of activity honoris causa as both a "partial reward"
for their efforts, but primarily for the advantage and edification of their earthly clientele (12.409).
13. The charge is repeated at 13.410-11, where Eustratius asks: "Do the souls of the saints appear in truth to those who are worthy, or is it that, according to your laws and logic , 'a divine power simulating
the souls of the saints appears instead of the saints to those worthy of such visions and manifestations'?"; and again at 18.488: "According to your argument, <the miracles of the saints> are wrought solely by the power of God simulating
the forms
of the holy martyrs and of the other saints and servants of God." See also 14.423, where Eustratius asserts that: "Angels appeared
, and not grace transformed into angels
." These particular usages deriving from schema and morphe are relatively rare, but cf.2 Cor 11.14, where "Satan disguises himself
as an angel of light"; and Chrysostom, Hom.hab.Gothus 8.5: "That star (i.e., of Bethlehem, cf. Matt 2.2,9-10) was not one of the visible stars, but a certain divine and invisible power transformed into the appearance of a star"
(PG 63:507.40-41; cf. 508.13 and 21-22:
; and John Climacus, below, n. 21.
14. At times, Eustratius' opponents appear to comprise two distinct groups, although he generally conflates their respective positions. For example, after citing a series of biblical proof texts, Eustratius states that "these passages prove that the teaching of those who say that souls depart <from life> into non-existence
, and those who say that souls are inactive
after death, are in agreement
with each other" (7.363). Eustratius then notes that the verb and participle of Job 3.19 "refute the opinions of both <groups>"
(7.364-65). In other places, Eustratius addresses broader issues and larger audiences and poses questions of a rhetorical nature that most likely do not represent the arguments of his opponents (e.g., 6.350).
15. Eustratius' creative interpretations of Prov 6.6-9 (1.337; 4.345-47); Gen 4.10(5.349-53); Matt 17.3 (10.383-88); extensive passages from Rev 5-14 (11.390-99); Luke 16.19-31 (25.523-33), to mention only some of the major biblical loci, are worthy of closer study. Among the church fathers cited are: Basil, Hex. (4.344;6.351); idem, HPs.114 (6.353-54); idem, HMart. (15.435); idem, HIul. (15.443); Chrysostom, multa (6.355; 10.387; 17.475-82; 28[29].578); Athanasius, Inc. (14.430); Gregory Nazianzus, Or. 43 (16.457); idem, Or. 18 (16.460); idem, Or. 7 (16.464); idem, Or. 4 (16.467); Gregory of Nyssa, Beat. (17.471); idem, bapt. diff. (17.471);idem, Anim. et res. (17.473); Hippolytus, Dan. (19.492); Methodius, Res. (19.494); Eustathius Ant., Anim. (19.498); Ps.-Dionysius, Cel.Hier. (24.520); Ephrem gr., Test.(28[29].565); Cyril Jer., Cat. (28[29].569); Cyril Alex., Defunct. (28[29].571); cf. Eustratius, v.Eut. 2449-52. Hagiographical works cited and commented on include:Gregory of Nyssa, v.Gr.Thaum. (13.411-16); Athanasius, v.Ant. (14.424-29; cf.27[28].539); v.Nich. (16.452-57); M.Bas.Amas. (20.503); Chryssipus, Enc.Thdr.(22.508); Apoc.ad.Luc. (23.514).
16. On this phrase, cf. Eustratius, vit.Eut. 25; Gregory Nazianzus, Or. 31.22: "Sleep is a state of inactivity and inaction " (ed. Paul Gallay, SC 250 [Paris: Cerf, 1978]:318.9-11); Basil, Hex. 2.2: "If matter is inferior to the activity
of God...the deficiency of matter would render God inactive and inefficacious
with respect to his own works" (ed. Stanislas Giet, SC 26 [Paris, 1968bis]:144.18); ibid., 8.5 (456.7-11); John of Damascus, Sacra Parallela (PG 95:1577D); and below, n. 30.
17. These qualities also serve to distinguish human souls from the souls of animals which perish along with their bodies (6.351-53). Eustratius here cites Lev 17.11: "the soul of all flesh is its blood," a verse which "terribly disturbed those who did not understand it," according to Origen, Dialogue with Heracleides (ed. Jean Scherer, SC 67 [Paris: Cerf, 1960]:78.8-9). Origen understood the verse allegorically, and posited an inner, spiritual self through which circulated figurative blood (88, lin.11; 98, lin. 15); cf. below, n. 27. For Eustratius, Lev. 17.11 simply uses the word "blood"
(6.357). Note that in the Dialogue with Heracleides, the question is that of the soul's
after death (76.20), and not its
, but cf.Eustratius, 28[29].560-61.
18. Cf. vit.Eut. 2484-502, on the synthesis of soul and body.
19. Eustratius repeatedly qualifies saintly apparitions and miracles as occurring solely by the "command of God" (: 4.347; 9.377); the "will of God" (
: 8.371); the "power of God" (
: 17.485; cf. 14.424); the "cooperation of God" (
: 14.429; 16.451; 17.469, 485); or "if God wills" (
: 14.432). Eustratius similarly argues that "If 'the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God' (Wis 1.1), it is understood that the 'hand of God' signifies <God's> power of activity
" (15.443; cf. 7.365f.). In another passage, the ability
of angels to produce visions
is said to be a power they receive from God, and so too do saintly souls have God as their helper
and partner
in their manifestations and activities (24.521). The vit.Eut. is redolent with the notion of divine-human synergy, cf. 462-63; 771; 1230-34; 1239-40; 1301; 1481-82; 1532; 1707-10; 1786; 2319.
20. Eustratius wrote a treatise on the nature of angels (as "simple and bodiless"), which he mentions in 7.367, and refers to a treatise by Eutychius on the relationship of spiritual beings to physical space, in which he "endeavors to show that the soul is not a body," 14.433; cf. vit.Eut. 643-45; 2276-77; 2635-67; and Allen, Evagrius Scholasticus, 39-40. See also Paul Rorem and John C. Lamoreaux, John ofScythopolis and the Dionysian Corpus (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 90; 96.
21. Apparently facing the same dilemma, Anastasius 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, Quaestiones 89 (PG 89:718CD); cf. Krausmüller, "God or Angels," 9-16; and Dagron, "Holy Images," 32, who calls this a "striking masquerade regulated by God." The Ps.-Athanasian version of this masquerade (Qu. 22; PG 28:612) was rejected as spurious in the twelfth century by Michael Glykas who nevertheless noted that "sometimes they [i.e., the saints] themselves appear to us on their own, at other times divine angels are sent instead of them, and sometimes it is the grace of the Holy Spirit" (ed. Sophronios Eustratiades, Eis tas aporias tes Theas Graphes Kephalaia I [Athens: P. D. Sakellariou, 1906], 248). According to John Climacus, fallen angels could also "assume the appearance
of angels of light (cf. 2 Cor 11.14) or martyrs, and appear to us in sleep and talk to us," Ladder 3, in an excursus on the "dreams of novices" (PG 88:672.21).
22. Cf. 6.357 and 13.418, although this does not seem to be the language of Eustratius' opponents; the v.Eut. 955-56, describes Justinian's aphthartic christology as proposing an incarnation "in fantasy, and not in truth" . Note also the Eutychian monophysites who, for their excessive sublimation of Christ's humanity, were labeled "Phantasiasts" by Eustratius' contemporary Eustathius Monachus, Epistula de duabus naturis (PG 86:904D; 909B; cf. below, n.23), and that, in the late eighth century, the iconophile patriarch Tarasius (d. 806), asserted that the "Phantasiasts" were iconoclasts (Mansi XIII, 168D-173D).
23. Cf. Justinian, Confessio rectae fidei adversus tria capitula (scr. 551): "If anyone confesses...that the <two> natures <of Christ> exist separately and self-subsistently , as Theodore and Nestorius blasphemously taught, let him be anathema" (PG 86:1015C = anathema 7); Eustathius Monachus, Epistula de duabusnaturis (ca. 540): "We say that Christ is from two natures...but <we do not say that Christ is> from two prosopa, since <the human nature> never existed self-subsistently"
(PG 86:912A; cf. 924B:
); Leontius of Jerusalem (saec. VI), Adv.Nestorianos 2.10: "We do not want to argue that the 'Lordly Man' is anhypostatic...but neither is he idiohypostaton, that is, separated from the Logos, for who would think that the anhypostatic is the same as the idiohypostaton?" (PG 86:1556A; cf. 1540CD); Photius, Bib. cod. 229 (ed. Henry, 4 (1965), 135.41; 157.12); Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, 282-86. See also John of Scythopolis' scholion on Ps.-Dionysius, The Divine Names 11.3 (952B):"Note what he (i.e., Ps.-Dionysius) means by 'individuality' (heterotes, idiotes), namely, each thing's being as it is by nature and remaining what it was when it came into being. These things are against the Acephalians (i.e., monophysites), who do not understand the nature of individuality," tr. Rorem and Lamoreaux, John of Scythopolis, 240, no. 397. For a trinitarian usage, see Anastasius (incertae originis, saec. VII?), fid.:"One is the Father, another is the Son, and another is the Holy Spirit, and for this reason they are idiohypostatos" (ed. Jean-Baptiste Pitra, Iuris Ecclesiastici GraecorumHistoria et Monumenta 2 [Rome, 1868], 271).
24. Eustratius argues that, while such visions are not manifestations of physical phenomena, they are nevertheless real, cf. Anastasius of Sinai, Quaestiones 89 (PG 89:717), and the comments of Dagron, "Holy Images and Likeness," 33.
25. Eustratius cites as an exception Gregory of Nyssa, bapt. diff., who describes an unbaptized soul after death as disdained by the angels and swept about in the air, desiring rest and shelter but finding none, and wailing and repenting in vain (PG 46:424BC; cf. 428B); cf. Gregory Nazianzus, Or. 40.23 (PG 36:389B). See also the Testament of Abraham, tr. E. P. Sanders in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James Hamilton Charlesworth (Garden City: Doubleday, 1983), 1.889-91, 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 seventh century, cf. François Halkin, "La vision de Kaioumos et le sort éternel de Philentolos Olympiou," AB 63 (1945): 56-64; and Costas P. Kyrris, "The Admission of the Souls of Immoral but Humane People into the 'Limbus Puerorum' according to the Cypriot Abbot Kaioumos," RESud-EstEur 9 (1971): 461-77.
26. At this point in the manuscript tradition the text breaks off abruptly. Allatius' edition is based on Vaticanus graecus 511, ff. 151-204 (10th-11th cent.), on which see Robert Devreese, Codices Vaticani Graeci 2 (Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1937), 367. The apology is also extant in Vatic. gr. 675, ff. 1-37v (11th-12th cent.); Devreese, CVG 3 (Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1950), 128-29, and in Paris. gr. 1059, 96 ff. (16th cent.), Henri Omont, Inventaire Sommaire des manuscrits grecs dela Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris, 1886), 213. In this final section of the work, Eustratius aligns prayer practices for the departed with key moments from the life of Christ, e.g., the third-day memorial is a "type" of the resurrection, the forty-day memorial of the ascension, etc.
27. Origen, Dialogue with Heracleides (see above, n. 17), 76-110; cf. idem, De princ. 3.4.2; Eusebius, HE 6.37; 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. Boniface Kotter, Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos 4 [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1981], 57).
28. Frank 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 recast on Aristotelian principles, so that the soul, as the "form" of the physical body, could not survive the body's dissolution, but cf. Paul Krüger, "Le sommeil des âmes dans l'oeuvre de Narsaï," OrSyr 4 (1959): 193-210; idem, "Gehenna und Scheol in dem Schriftum unter dem Names des Isaak von Antiochen," OKS 2 (1953): 27-79. See also Edmund Beck, "Ephräms Hymnen über das Paradies," Studia Anselmiana 26 (1951): 77-95; Philippe Gignoux, "Les Doctrines eschatologiques de Narsai," Oriens Syrianus 11 (1966): 321-52; 461-88; 12 (1967): 23-54; and Marie-Joseph Pierre, Aphraate le Sage Persan. Les Exposés, SC 349 (Paris: Cerf, 1988):191-99.
29. On Timothy I and the synod, see Antoine Guillaumont, "Sources de la doctrine de Joseph Hazzâyâ," OrSyr 3 (1958): 3-24; and Robert Beulay, "Joseph Hazzâyâ," DS 8 (1974): 1341-49. The anti-origenist remarks occur in the Lettre de Timothée àBoktišô (CSCO Syr. 30, p. 44); cf. Oskar Braun, "Zwei Synoden des Katholikos Timotheos I," OC 2 (1902): 308-9.
30. Cf. Rufus Ephesius Medicus (saec. I-II), De partibus corporis humani, ed. Charles Duremberg and Charles-Émile Ruelle (Paris, 1879), 32, lin. 1; Sextus Empiricus (saec. II-III), Adversus mathematicos 7.2, ed. Hermann Mutschmann and Jürgen Mau (Leipzig: Teubner, 1914; 1984), 2.8.23-27; Anastasius of Sinai, Quaestiones 89: "If someone suffers a severe blow to the head, the mind is immediately damaged, and that person can no longer distinguish things nor remember them as he once did" (PG 89:717AB); Meletius the Monk, De hominis opificio (saec. IX?): "The faculties of the mind are contained within the head...when the head is impaired, the mind becomes inactive and inert
," in Anecdota Graeca e codd. Manuscriptis Bibliothecarum Oxoniensium, ed. John Anthony Cramer (Oxford, 1836; repr. Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1963), III.23.20-21-24.1-6; and Gregory of Nyssa, De hominis opificio 12.8: "Although I am aware that the intellectual energies
can be blunted, or even rendered altogether ineffective
in a certain condition of the body, I do not hold this to be sufficient evidence for limiting the faculty
of the mind to any particular place." Instead, Nyssa proposes that, like a musician playing on a damaged instrument, the mind continues to employ its proper faculties
but the instrument remains unreceptive to them, being "inoperative and ineffective"
(PG 44:160D; 161B); cf. idem, De mort. (Gregorii Nyssenii Opera, ed. W. Jaeger [Leiden: Brill, 1952], 9.52.14); and idem, Eun. 3.10 (Gregorii Nyssenii Opera 2.303.18).
31. Haldon, "Supplementary Essay," 45-46; cf. his "The Works of Anastasius of Sinai: A Key Source for the History of Seventh-Century East Mediterranean Society and Belief," in The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, ed. Averil Cameron and Lawrence Conrad (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 1.107-47. For a contemporary western parallel, see Peter Brown, Relics and Social Status in the Age ofGregory of Tours (Reading: University of Reading, 1977), who likewise uncovers "alternative systems of explanation-the soothsayer, the folk-doctor and (quite as important for Gregory, because also the bearer of a rival system of cure and explanation) the Christian popular prophet," 9 n. 40; cf. 5 n. 11, for the "skepticism of a Jewish doctor."
32. That the development of the liturgical cycle was closely connected to theological controversy can be seen from Justinian's legislation regarding the proper celebration of Christ's Nativity exactly nine months after the feast of the Annunciation, cf. Michel van Esbroeck, "La lettre de l'empereur Justinien sur lur l'Annonciation et la Noël," AB 86 (1968): 351-71. For the monophysite critique of patristic authorities, cf. Gustave Bardy, "Sévère d'Antioche et la critique des textes patristiques," in MémorialLouis Petit, Archives de l'Orient chrétien 1 (Bucharest: Institut français d'études byzantines, 1948), 15-31; and Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, 91-92.
33. Photius, Bib. cod. 232 (ed. Henry, 5 (1967), 67-79). On inaccuracies in the calendar, cf. 68.39-44, 1-5; and 77.38-46; on the soul's incorporeality, cf. 73.24-38; on the finite soul of Adam, cf. 74.40-43; on the soul's confinement to the grave, cf.74.12-15; on the inefficaciousness of prayers for the dead, cf. 79.34-37; cf. Adolf von Harnack, "The 'Sic et Non' of Stephanus Gobarus," HTR 16 (1923): 205-34 (= translation and commentary); Gustave Bardy, "Le florilège d'Étienne Gobar," REB 5 (1947): 5-30; 7 (1949): 51-52. Gobar is sometimes identified with Stephen the Alexandrian sophist (d. after 619), who is further conflated with Stephen of Athens, cf. Wanda Wolska-Conus, "Stéphanos d'Athènes et Stéphanos d'Alexandrie," REB 47 (1989): 5-89.
34. I.e., the "Three Chapters," noted above, along with Origen, Evagrius, and Didymus, cf. vit.Eut. 620-27; 978-80; and Milton Anastos, "The Immutability of Christ and Justinian's Condemnation of Theodore of Mopsuestia," DOP 6 (1951):265-89. Among his other achievements, the ever-resourceful emperor Justinian is to be credited with having invented the forensic procedures for post mortem condemnations, arguing, in part, that the apostles had condemned Judas after his death and established another in his place (cf. Acts 1.15-26), and that, conversely, both John Chrysostom and Flavian of Constantinople were, after their deaths, restored to the communion of the saints.
35. Note that the relationship between body and soul was an important tool for thinking about the relationship between humanity and divinity in the person of Christ. Popularized by Cyril of Alexandria and turned into a polemical device by Severus of Antioch, it was later criticized and eventually rejected, although later writers continued to make use of it; cf. Leontius Scholasticus, De Sectis (PG 86:1245A-1249D); Justinian, Contra Monophysitas (PG 86[1]:1115B-17D; tr. Kenneth P. Wesche, On the Person of Christ [Crestwood: Saint Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1991], 38-40); idem, Confessio rectae fidei adversus tria capitula (ibid., 171-72); and John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa 3.3 (Kotter, Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos 2 (1973), 113). See also Karl-Heinz Uthemann, "Das anthropologische Modell der Hypostatischen Union," Kleronomia 14 (1982): 215-32; and Ferdinand Gahbauer, Das anthropologische Modell. Ein Beitrag zur Christologie der frühenKirche bis Chalcedon (Würzburg: Augustinus-Verlag, 1984).
36. On the whole question, see Joseph P. Farrell, Free Choice in St. Maximus theConfessor (South Canaan: St. Tikhon's Seminary Press, 1989), esp. 95-130 ("The Psychology of Willing in the Eschaton and in Christ").
37. See, for example, Elliot Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), esp. 52-73, which surveys much of the relevant literature on this question.
38. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Love of the Poor, ed. A. Van Heck, GregoriiNysseni. De Pauperibus Amandis Orationes Duo (Leiden: Brill, 1964), Or. 1; 8-9.
39. Dagron, "Holy Images," 33. Whereas the earliest depictions of Christ and the saints were rather fluid and varied, the ninth-century iconophiles began to canonize a specific and recognizable physiognomy for each of the saints, on which see Henry Maguire, "Magic and the Christian Image," in Byzantine Magic, ed. Henry Maguire (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1995), 51-71; and idem, The Icons of Their Bodies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 5-47. On the inscription of the name, and its relationship to the image and the imaged hypostasis, see the acta of the Council of Nicaea 787 (Mansi XIII, 252D; 257D; 261D; 269E; 301C; 340E; 344B; 416D); Theodore the Studite, Second Refutation of the Iconoclasts 17 (PG 99:348BC), tr. Catharine P. Roth, St. Theodore the Studite: On the Holy Icons (Crestwood: St.Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1981), 51-52, cf. 84-85; the Life of St. Stephen the Younger 58, in which the icon of Christ is said to be the "tabernacle [skenoma] of the divine name" (PG 100:1164D); and Maguire, Icons of their Bodies, 100-145 ("Naming and Individuality").
40. See above, n. 26.
41. On which see Alexander Alexakis, "A Florilegium in the Life of Nicetas of Medicion and a Letter of Theodore Studios," DOP 48 (1994): 179-97.
42. ed. Jean Gouillard, "Le Synodikon de l'Orthodoxie," Travaux et Mémoires 2 (1967): 1-316; cf. idem, "Nouveaux témoins du Synodikon de l'Orthodoxie," AB 100 (1982): 459-62.
43. I.e., the mandylion, a cloth bearing the authentic likeness of Christ, said to have been produced by Christ himself, first mentioned in a sixth-century account of the legend of Abgar of Edessa, and a central justification for the making of icons, cf. Averil Cameron, "The History of the Image of Edessa: The Telling of a Story," in Okeanos: Essays Presented to Ihor Ševčenko on His Sixtieth Birthday, ed. Cyril Mango and Omeljan Pritsak (Cambridge: Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University, 1984), 80-94; Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, tr. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 208-24; Sharon Gerstel, Beholding the Sacred Mysteries: Programs ofthe Byzantine Sanctuary (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999), 68-77 ("Reviewing the Mandylion"); and Herbert Kessler and Gerhard Wolf, eds., The HolyFace and the Paradox of Representation (Bologna: Nuova Alfa, 1998).
44. Most of which are aimed against the Paulicians and the Bogomils, neo-Manichean groups which rejected the rituals and sacraments of the church, cf. Janet Hamilton and Bernard Hamilton, Christian Dualist Heresies in the Byzantine World c. 650-1405 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998); and Dmitri Oblensky, The Bogomils: A Study in Balkan Neo-Manichaeism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948). Jews are another group singled out in this collection, and they figure rather prominently in the rhetoric (and art) of iconophile polemics, cf. Kathleen Corrigan, Visual Polemics in the Ninth-Century Byzantine Psalters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Leslie Brubaker, Vision and Meaning in Ninth-Century Byzantium (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 269-71; 275-77; and Herbert Kessler, "Medieval Art as Argument," in Iconography at the Crossroads, ed. Brendan Cassidy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 59-83, who unveils the anti-Jewish texture of the mandylion (above, n. 43).
45. See, for example, Luther's revival of "soul sleep," and its rejection and refutation by Calvin in his Psychopannychia (scr. 1534, pub. 1542), an apology for the post mortem activity of the saints deeply indebted to patristic sources, tr. Henry Beveridge, Tracts and Treatises in Defense of the Reformed Faith (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1951), 3.414-90; cf. George Hunston Williams, The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962), 104-6; 581-92; and, more generally, Johannes van Oort, "John Calvin and the Church Fathers," in The Reception of the Church Fathersin the West, ed. Irena Backus (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 2:661-700. For the English and Victorian redactions of these debates, cf. Norman T. Burns, Christian Mortalism fromTyndale to Milton (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 90-191; Philip C. Almond, Heaven and Hell in Enlightenment England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 38-80; and Geoffrey Rowell, Hell and the Victorians: AStudy of the Nineteenth-Century Theological Controversies concerning Eternal Punishment and the Future Life (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974).
