Old Translations of Gregory of Nyssa’s Works

Tina Dolidze/Ekvtime (Tamaz) Kochlamazashvili

“Great Father,” “Stronghold of Orthodoxy,” “River of the Paradise,” “Tree of Life for the believers,” “Inculcator of the Truth,” “Splendid Preacher of repentance”—this is an incomplete list of the epithets that Old Georgian intellectuals, on the trail of Byzantines, used to attribute to Gregory of Nyssa. Along with these elevated appraisals, numerous translations of Gregory of Nyssa’s works are preserved in a multitude of manuscripts, as well as quotations from his works. Chants and nar- ratives included in the Georgian liturgical books attest to the great reputation Gregory of Nyssa had among educated men in . The Georgian manuscript tradition identifies more than 30 works under the name of Gregory of Nyssa, both authentic and pseudo- epigraphic. The Georgian reader has been acquainted with the works of Gregory of Nyssa since the earliest period of medieval Georgian literature. Fol- lowing the periods into which the Georgian literature of the Middle Ages is divided as well as the typological classification of translation, the Georgian versions of his works can be organised into three periods: (1.) before the 80s of the 10th century, (2.) from the 80s of the 10th century until the second half of the 11th century, and (3.) from the second half of the 11th century up until the 20s of the 12th century. During the first period there were produced three anonymous trans- lations of Gregory’s works: a) On the creation of man which he wrote to his brother Petrus bishop of Sebasteia, which actually is a translation of De hominis opificio. This oldest Georgian translation of a Gregory work is dated to the 8th–9th centuries.1

1 It has been published twice, first on the basis of the 10th century Shatberdi col- lection and 12th–13th century Jerusalem manuscript (Codex Jerusalem, Greek Patriar- chal Library Georgian 44) together with the oldest translation of Basil’s In Hexaemeron (see The Oldest redactions of Basil of Caesarea’s “On Six Days” and Gregory of Nyssa’s 578 tina dolidze/ekvtime (tamaz) kochlamazashvili

b) Of the same period is the earliest Georgian translation of the homily On the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ and on St. Stephen (corresponds to Gregory’s In sanctum Stephanum I ).2 Only a fragment of this homily exists today in the oldest Georgian polycephalon.3 c) The homily on Epiphany In illud: Hic est Filius meus dilectus (Matt 3:17; 17:5; Luke 9:35) was rendered also before the 10th cen- tury. The closing part of this homily repeats verbatim the excerpt from John of Damascus’s Sacra parallela in which John of Damas- cus names Gregory of Nyssa as its author.4 This work is fully pre- served in the Greek version and is ascribed in Patrologia Graeca 88 to Gregory of Antioch. The editor of the Georgian translation, Tamaz Kochlamazashvili,5 however, regards Gregory of Nyssa as the author of this homily grounding his view on the following arguments: (i) besides the Georgian manuscript tradition the authorship of Gregory of Nyssa is testified by John of Damascus. (ii.) The homily adheres to the highly rhetorical style of writing as a characteristic for Gregory of Nyssa; it is unlikely that such a mediocre writer as Gregory of Antioch would have been the author of this wonderfully composed homily. (iii.) The dilogy delivered on the theme of Epiphany, particularly its second part, bears strongly on allegorical interpretations greatly reminiscent of the Cappadocian allegory. For the same reason the dilogy should not be ascribed to Gregory of Antioch or John Chrysostom, since allegory is

“On the Constitution of Man”. Text according to the 10th–13th centuries manuscripts, research and vocabulary by Ilia Abuladze [: Metsniereba, 1964] [in Georgian]), later with the other texts of the 10th century Shatberdi collection, when the complete collection was published (Shatberdi Collection of 10th Century, ed. by Bakar Gigineish- vili and Elguja Giunashvili [Tbilisi: Metsniereba, 1979] [in Georgian]). 2 The first part of the title indicates that the commemoration of Stephen (27 December) falls on Christmas period; cf. Nino Melikishvili: The Homiletic Treatises of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom (Tbilisi: Logos, 2000), 61 note 13 (in Georgian). 3 The fragment is edited by Ilia Abuladze: Mravaltavi. Bulletin of the Institute of Language, History and Material Culture 14 (Tbilisi: Institute of Language, History and Material Culture, 1944), 290; second publication in: Ilia Abuladze: Works. Vol. 3 (Tbilisi: Metsniereba, 1982), 80. 4 The extant fragments of In illud: Hic est Filius meus dilectus are edited in PG 46, cols. 1109–1112. It deserves to be mentioned that this fragment is quoted in the Geor- gian translations of the Hagia Sophia Synaxarion, where it is attributed to Gregory of Nyssa and the Typikon of Sabas’ Lavra, which adduces it anonymously. 5 St. Gregory of Nyssa, Homily on Epiphany, text and vocabulary by Ekvtime Kochlamazashvili (Tbilisi: St. David the Builder’s Church of the Tbilisi State - versity, 2002) (in Georgian). The text follows two manuscripts of the 12th and 18th centuries.