With the publication of the fifth installment of the series Histoire de la littérature grecque chrétienne, the completion of this ambitious six-volume project to provide an overview of Greek patrology from the first century to the Council of Chalcedon (451) is now firmly in sight. The initiative began long before 2008, when the first introductory volume appeared and received a lukewarm review in BMCR.[1] This book was subsequently updated, revised, and published in a second edition in 2016. Since then, the series and volume editors have dutifully rolled out the second (2016) and third installments (2017), which offered author-oriented overviews of the earliest Greek Christian literature from the apostle Paul to Irenaeus of Lyon (vol. 2) and from Clement of Alexandria to Eusebius of Caesarea (vol. 3). For the second half of the series, which focuses on fourth- and early fifth-century writers, the editors have switched to an organizing principle based on geographical location: Volume 4 (2021) treated authors in Constantinople, Greece, and Asia Minor; the volume under review covers Egypt and Cyrene; and the final forthcoming volume will conclude the series in Syria and Palestine.
Written by a host of European experts in Greek patristics and curated by Marco Rizzi, the essays in this volume are dedicated primarily to the study of the theological production and in some cases the hagiographical representation of early Christians authors generally well-known to specialists. The first half of the book is devoted primarily to the work of bishops of Alexandria: Alexander (313–326) and Athanasius (328–339 and 346–373, who share a chapter in the context of the Arian crisis; Theophilus (385–412) and Dioscorus I (444–451), who also share a chapter; and Cyril (412–444), who earns the most comprehensive treatment in the entire book. Tucked in among them is a chapter on the most significant Christian teacher active in the city during the fourth century: Didymus the Blind (c. 313–398). After a brief note on chronographers and historians, which treats the writings of Pandorus and Annianus among others, the book pivots to focus on monastic literature.
The second half of the book begins with texts written by and about Anthony the Great and other Christian dwellers in the Nitrian Desert within his orbit of influence, like Ammonas, Macarius, Serapion of Thmuis, and the elusive Steven of Thebes, as well as influential works that transmitted knowledge of their lives and teachings, including the History of the Monks of Egypt and the Sayings of the Desert Fathers. There follows a short chapter on the writings of Pachomius (d. 348) and his successors with ample attention to the hagiographical tradition concerning him. A short essay on the lesser-known Isidore of Pelusium (d. c. 450) concludes this chapter on Pachomius, but this otherwise welcome introduction to his vast epistolary corpus feels like an odd epilogue to a chapter loosely organized around the theme of cenobitic monasticism. Chapters on Evagrius of Pontus (345–399), a native of Asia Minor who only spent the last dozen years of his life in Egypt, and Synesius of Cyrene (c. 373–c. 414), who served as bishop of Ptolemais in Libya, come next.
The two most surprising entries in the volume greet the reader at the very end of the book. The first belongs to the poet Nonnus of Panopolis (fl. fifth century), who wrote a verse paraphrase of the Gospel of John in hexameters, but whose primary claim to fame is a 20,000-line poem in Homeric Greek on the life and travels of Dionysus (Dionysiaca), which has been heralded as the longest surviving Greek epic from antiquity.[2] The second offers an introduction to Coptic literature in the context of translations from Greek. This contribution opens new vistas for understanding the reception of Christian Greek texts in the linguistic context of late antique Egypt, where some monks preferred and perhaps even needed to read and hear authoritative texts in written and spoken in Coptic. It also brings to bear the evidence of near contemporary papyrus manuscripts as an important resource for the study of these dynamics. Both articles are excellent primers to their respective subjects and feature generous bibliographies to aid with further exploration, but they fit uneasily in a volume devoted to Greek patrology in late antique Egypt.
Like other volumes in this series, the editor has had to wrestle with a stable of authors who have interpreted their mandates in different ways. This is almost inevitable in edited collections of this scope and ambition. While each of the contributions succeeds in offering a synthetic overview of the authors in question, sometimes simply by working their way through a checklist of their known works, it is no surprise to find that some of the articles are more thorough than others. The discussion of the writings of Athanasius (pp. 57–86) is much shorter, for example, than the expansive coverage given to Evagrius of Pontus (pp. 381–493), and even shorter than the excellent entry on Didymus the Blind (pp. 87–120). The bibliographies are uniformly thorough with ample reference to English language scholarship, which is not always the case with European publications. Readers of this volume should also keep in mind, however, that the most recent published update to the Clavis patrum Graecorum series is devoted to the very same authors covered in the volume under review: Clavis Patrum Graecorum, Volumen II: Saeculum quartum patres postnicaeni, Tomus I: Scriptores Alexandrini et Aegyptii, ed. M. Geerard and J. Noret, 2nd ed. (Turnhout, 2023). Since the volume under review only cites the Clavis by its standard abbreviation (CPG) followed by the number assigned to each text in its inventory, there is no way to know whether the contributors were able to bring to bear any of the insights offered by this new edition of the fundamental work of reference in the field, but it seems unlikely given how proximate in time both books were published. Even so, this volume promises to serve scholars and students of Greek patrology in Egypt for many years to come.
Notes
[1] In his thorough and sober review (BMCR 2009.05.17), Eric Fournier characterized the first volume as “an odd book … of uneven quality and interest … [b]ut the main weakness … is its lack of unity and overall direction.” In contrast, Christian Bouchet, who reviewed it in Revue des études anciennes 110 (2008), pp. 693–95, was effusive in his praise, despite the issues that he also clearly recognized in the book’s organization: “Au total, le lecteur ne peut que se réjouir de disposer avec cet ouvrage introductive d’un outil remarquable, voire indispensable, non seulement pour la pertinence et la qualité scientifique évidente des études, mais encoure pour le couci de larté qui a animé les auteurs. Et, si j’ai pu signaler au début l’absence d’unité formelle dans ce volume, je dirai pour finir qu’il est parfaitement coherent dans le fond …” (p. 695).
[2] Alan Cameron, Wandering Poets and Other Essays on Late Greek Literature and Philosophy (Oxford, 2016), p. 81.