Encomium of St John Chrysostom

This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ The hagiographic homilies of St John of Damascus a study in Byzantine homiletics Tsagkaropoulos, Petros Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 29. Sep. 2021 The Hagiographic Homilies of St John of Damascus: A Study in Byzantine Homiletics Petros Tsagkaropoulos Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Classics Research 1 | Abstract This thesis focuses on a particular group of sermons delivered by the eighth-century monastic and theologian St John of Damascus. More specifically, John of Damascus’ three hagiographic homilies (Encomium of St Barbara; Encomium of St John Chrysostom; Passion of St Artemius) are translated and analysed to provide a model for the treatment of the homiletic literature of the middle Byzantine period. The originality of the study lies in the astute and coherent close reading of the corpus. Sensitive to the lack of contextual information with regard both to the homilies and the preacher himself, an attempt is made to bring to the surface the wealth of content and meaning contained in these texts and flesh out aspects of the sermons which are otherwise neglected or insufficiently understood. This is also the first thorough study of John of Damascus’ writings as literature, with an emphasis on style, composition, primary sources, and intertextuality. Although the basic line of approach can be said to be literary, the thesis touches on a number of areas and themes, such as theology, hagiography and asceticism, power and political authority, and approaches to the ‘self’, all of which demonstrate the intricacy of John’s sermons. The study begins with an examination of the circumstances in which the homilies were delivered (chapter 1). In chapter 2 the focus moves to John Damascene’s use of literary sources and their decisive influence on his hagiographic encomia. Chapter 3 then proceeds to discuss the insight that homilies provide into John’s diffusion of family and monastic ideals into the personal lives of the faithful. From that point attention shifts to John’s efforts to create negative models of political authority and heresy as a means of alluding to politically driven religious disputes affecting contemporary Christians at community level (chapter 4). Finally, the homilies are approached as reflections of the preacher’s self, a literary space for the expression of thought and emotion revealing John’s view of himself as a monk, theologian, and preacher (chapter 5). The last three chapters comprise the translations of the three homilies. 2 | Acknowledgements Through the years I have been blessed with the love and support of many people without whom this thesis would not have been possible. I would like to thank, first of all, my supervisors, Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe, who drew me firmly into the world of Byzantium and helped me lay the foundations of this thesis with her guidance and insight, and Ioannis Papadogiannakis and Dionysios Stathakopoulos, who unhesitatingly contributed to the further development of this project with their constructive suggestions, prudent advice, and positive attitude in moments of wavering. I am grateful, too, to my examiners, Andrew Louth and Vincent Déroche, for their valuable and inspiring comments. I wish to express my gratitude to the ‘Instituto de Lenguas y Culturas – Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas’ in Madrid and to Inmaculada Pérez Martín, in particular, for offering me a research stay of one year that guaranteed continuous progress on the thesis. Thanks go also to Dominic Preston and Ethan Guebert for having looked at various parts of this work at different stages, making valuable corrections. I am grateful, too, to the A.G. Leventis Foundation for generously funding my programme for the duration of three years, and the former Centre for Hellenic Studies at King’s College London for awarding me the ‘Sophia Studentship in Byzantine Studies’ funded by the Michael Marks Charitable Trust, the Hellenic Foundation, and an anonymous donor. Above all, I must take this opportunity to thank my wife Coru for her endless support, cheerful tolerance, and love, which have unconditionally accompanied me on this journey throughout these years. I also turn to my parents, Paraskevas and Eleftheria, to whom I owe everything I am and have achieved, and to my brother, Theodoros, for the countless pleasant moments we have spent together. Last, I would like to thank my new family in Spain, Emilio, Loli, Cristina, and Emilio, and single out for special thanks, Ángel, Paloma, Susana, and the community of ‘Ruah’. 3 | Contents Abstract …………………………………………………………………………. 2 Aknowledgements ………………………………………………………………. 3 Contents …………………………………………………………………………. 4 PART I Introduction …………………………………………………………………….. 6 1. Hagiographic preaching in context: location and occasion …………………. 28 2. The art of preaching: composition, topoi, and metaphrasis ………………… 49 3. Fulfilling the Christian ideal: saints as models of family and monastic life ………………………………………………………………… 93 4. Confronting the authorities: political power and the threat to the faith ……. 131 5. The preacher’s self …………………………………………………………. 157 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………. 184 PART II Encomium of St Barbara ……………………………………………………… 191 Encomium of St John Chrysostom ……………………………………………. 213 Passion of St Artemius ………………………………………………………... 227 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………… 270 4 PART I 5 | Introduction St John of Damascus is a rare example of a late father of the eastern Church who exercised a strong influence on both eastern and western theological thought and whose work as an ecclesiastical writer received widespread acceptance over the centuries.1 Today the writings of ‘the theologian who recapitulated patristic tradition, either dogmatic or ethical, in the most definitive systematic way’2 continue to appeal to scholars for their comprehensiveness and insight. The On the Orthodox Faith, John’s compendious account of Christian dogma and belief, has an imposing presence on the literary landscape he created. Complemented by his Dialectica and the On Heresies, it comprises the tripartite The Fountain Head of Knowledge, which, along with his dogmatic and polemical writings, has been the subject of intense scholarly scrutiny.3 Two further aspects of John’s writing activity, which testify to his creative ingenuity and venturesome character as a theologian, have attracted increased attention in modern scholarship: his involvement in the dispute over the veneration of icons 1 For a recent discussion of the reception of John of Damascus in Byzantium and its periphery, and the West, see Adrahtas 2015: 265-71. 2 ibid. 265. Also Louth 1998: 247: ‘St John of Damascus is known to history principally as the greatest epitomist of Patristic theology.’ 3 Numerous books and articles deal with questions of theological and philosophical method and scope in John of Damascus’ writings. Louth 2002 remains the only comprehensive monograph to date that explores the major areas of John’s thought across his dogmatic and polemical treatises. It is supplemented by several other studies which focus on more specific aspects of his work. Here I will cite the most recent according to subject. See, on John’s trinitarian theology and Christology: Blowers 2012; Gleede 2012: 174-81; Twombly 2015; on his reliance on and reading of philosophical and Aristotelian concepts: Zhyrkova 2009; id. 2010; Erismann 2011; del Campo Echevarría 2013; Ables 2015; on his cosmology: Biriukov 2016. Several discussions of John of Damascus’ work and thought are also included in Kontouma 2015, a volume of collected studies published between 1995 and 2011. Still useful for reference are two older monographs, Langen 1879 and Lupton 1882. For an older survey of research on John of Damascus, see Hoeck 1951: 5-60. A recent overview of his works and available editions is provided by Kontouma 2015: I.30-43. 6 and his engagement with Islam.4 Theology, however, is only one of the pillars on which his reputation rested. The poetic legacy of John of Damascus has always been a hallmark of his extensive oeuvre, to the extent that ‘within a few centuries of his death he was thought of as the liturgical poet’.5 Even though authoritative studies on the authenticity of the liturgical poetry attributed

Load more