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Mcdonald, James Joseph (2020) Paideia in the Poetry of Gregory Nazianzen

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Mcdonald, James Joseph (2020) Paideia in the Poetry of Gregory Nazianzen View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Glasgow Theses Service McDonald, James Joseph (2020) Paideia in the poetry of Gregory Nazianzen. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/81630/ Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten: Theses https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] PAIDEIA IN THE POETRY OF GREGORY NAZIANZEN James Joseph McDonald (MA, MRes) SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES Submitted in fulfilment of the FACULTY OF ARTS requirementsUniversity for theof Glasgow Degree of PhD 1 Abstract: In this thesis, I explore Gregory’s conception and use of paideia in his poetry as understood in four main ways: (1) Gregory’s knowledge of, familiarity with, and utilisation/manipulation of the literary tradition. (2) His use of paideia as a communication code for self-fashioning, as well as for fashioning his friends and enemies. (3) His pedagogy, that is, the didactic methods used to teach biblical knowledge and theological doctrine. (4) The place of classical culture in the Christian (ascetic) life. In other words, Gregory’s conception of (a Christian) paideia. This thesis focuses upon particular (groups of) poems by Gregory that explore how exactly he puts into practice the episcopal identity which he forges for himself as prytanis of both sacred and profane wisdom. Contents Abbreviations .................................................................................................. 5 Introduction .................................................................................................... 1 The Research Question ............................................................................................................... 1 What is Paideia? ........................................................................................................................... 2 Methodology .................................................................................................................................. 8 Thesis Outline ............................................................................................................................. 10 Education and Culture in the works of Gregory’s Contemporaries: ................................. 12 Julian............................................................................................................................................ 12 Basil .............................................................................................................................................. 14 Gregory Nyssen ........................................................................................................................... 16 Gregory Nazianzen ..................................................................................................................... 18 Chapter 1: Gregory’s Epitaphia ............................................................................ 29 Paideia and the Second (and Third?) Sophistic .................................................................... 30 The Pepaideumenoi ................................................................................................................... 36 Thespesius and Prohaeresius ..................................................................................................... 36 Martinianus .......................................................................................................................... 42 Livia, Euphemius and Amphilochus .............................................................................................. 48 Caesarius ............................................................................................................................ 55 Bishops, Ascetics, and Paideia ................................................................................................ 64 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 72 Chapter 2: The Biblical Poems ............................................................................. 75 Gregory the School Teacher? ................................................................................................... 77 Poetry as a Gateway to the Bible ........................................................................................... 86 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 100 Chapter 3: The Hymn and the Agon: Carm. 1.2.1 ...................................................... 101 Asceticism and Paideia in Jerome and Gregory Nyssen .................................................... 101 The Poem on Virginity ............................................................................................................. 105 The Hymn as prologue ........................................................................................................... 106 The Rhetoric of the Rangstreit ................................................................................................. 112 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 127 Chapter 4: The Battle for the Trinity and Paideia in the Theological Orations and Poemata Arcana ........................................................................................................ 130 The Battle for Paideia in the Theological Orations........................................................... 132 The PA: A New Front in the Battle for Paideia .................................................................. 141 The Orphic Hymns in the PA .................................................................................................. 144 A (Middle-)Platonic Reading of Creation and Salvation .................................................... 149 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 159 Conclusions .................................................................................................. 164 Bibliography ................................................................................................. 177 Acknowledgements: First and foremost, I must thank prof. Jan Stenger and prof. Isabel Ruffell for their continuous support and without whose encouragement, criticism, and guidance, I could not have completed this thesis. I must also thank the various people who attended the conferences at which I presented parts of this research for their helpful feedback. Thanks also goes to Giuseppe Celico and Katharina Patommel, for helping me better understand scholarship in Italian and German respectively; and Simon Hanzal for helping me “crunch the numbers” for my analysis of the metre in the poems discussed in chapter two. Dr. Arianna Gullo provided tremendous encouragement and support with chapter one of this thesis, thus improving it vastly. Finally, a great debt of gratitude I owe to my mother and father for their unfailing support and love, to my wife, Shuxin, for her continued support, encouragement, and hot meals, and to Theodore my son for keeping things in perspective. This research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (Grant ref. no.: AH/L503915). Abbreviations Abbreviations of authors and their works are the same as found in the LSJ – except patristic authors who are abbreviated in accordance with Lampe. EG G. Kaibel, Epigrammata Graeca (Berlin, 1878) Lampe G.W.H. Lampe (ed.), A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford, 1968) LSJ H.G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th edition revised by H.S. Jones and R. McKenzie (Oxford, 1940) LXX Rahlfs, A. (ed.), Septuaginta, revised ed. by R. Hanhart (Stuttgart, 2006) OCD S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth (eds.) The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th Edition (Oxford, 2012) PGRSRE Janiszewski, P., Stebnicka, K., and Szabat, E., Prosopography of Greek Rhetors and Sophists in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 2015) PLRE A.H.M. Jones, J.R. Martindale and J. Morris, The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, vol.1 (Cambridge, 1971) SGO R. Merkelbach and J. Stauber (eds.), Steinepigramme aus dem griechischen Osten, 5 vols. (Berlin, 1998–2004) Introduction The Research Question On my desk, there sits an icon of Saint Gregory Nazianzen, an image of a bearded man, dressed in a pallium with a book in his left hand and his right hand held out with three fingers extended and held together (no doubt a sign of the Trinity which he so strenuously defended). The interesting thing, I find, with such icons, is that there is little to distinguish one (episcopal) saint from another. Most of them are bearded, holding books, wearing a pallium, and so on. All that can distinguish these images (at least to my untrained eye) are the inscriptions: ho hagios Gregorios, or whatever the name might be. Just as with icons, most lay Christians would think
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