Lactantius As Christian Cicero, Cicero As Shadow-Like Instructor

CHAPTER 3 Lactantius as Christian Cicero, Cicero as Shadow-like Instructor

Gábor Kendeffy1

It was with regard to the excellence of his style that Pico della Mirandola,2 developing the evaluation of Jerome,3 labelled Lactantius Cicero Christianus. To confess the truth, as someone interested primarily in the theological thought of this author, I have always regarded this label as to some extent derogatory. With regard to the doctrinal content, to be sure, the oeuvre of Lactantius has some important common traits with Cicero’s philosophical

1 The most extended both doctrinal and (to a greater extent) philological treatment of the question can be found in J. Bryce, The Library of Lactantius, New York-London 1990. Further highly useful works are as R. Pichon, l Lactance, Lactance: étude sur le mouvement philosophique et religieux sous le règne de Constantin. Paris 1901, 246–266; Chr. Ingremeau, “Lactance et la justice dans le livre V des Institutions Divines” in Regards sur le monde antique. Hommages à Guy Sabbah. Textes recueillis par Madeleine Piot. Lyon, Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 2002, 154– 162; eadem, “Lactance et la justice” in: Jean-Yves Guillaumin et Stéphane Ratti (éd.), Autour de Lactance. Hommages à Pierre Monat. Besancon-Paris 2003, pp. 43–52. B. Colot, “Humanitas et ses synonymes chez Lactance,” in: C. Moussy (ed.), Les problèmes de la synonomie en Latin. Paris, 1992; eadem, “Pietas, argument et expression d’ un nouveau lien socio-religieux dans le christianisme romain de Lactance,” in M. F. Wiles and E. J. Yarnold (edd.), Studia Patristica, 1999, Vol. 34. Leuven, 2001. pp. 23–32; and especially eadem, Lactance: Penser la conversion de Rome au temps de Constantin, Florence (Olschki), 2014 (in process of publication). This book is based on the habilitation dissertation of the author, which I had the opportunity to study as member of the jury of the habilitation (September 2013, University of Lille III). Hereby I wish to express my sincere thanks to her for having agreed to my use of her unpublished text. (In the following I will refer to the book as Lactance: Penser la conversion de Rome . . . 2014, to the dissertation as “Penser la conversion de Rome . . . 2013). Dense and informative surveys for Lactantius’ use of Cicero are: Th. Zielinski in his Cicero im Wandel der Jahrhunderte (Leipzig, 1912/2nd ed.) 120–131; S. MacCormack, “Cicero in late antiquity, in Cambridge Companion to Cicero, Cambridge 2013, 258–263. Less instructive is B. Weil, 2000 Jahre Cicero, Zürich 1962. 2 Pico, “De studio divinae atque humanae philosophiae 7: Quis apud nos non videat esse Ciceronem sed Christianum, hoc est, aliquem qui eum ad lineam unguemque expresserit? Quis enim non advertit, Lactantium Firmianum aequasse ipsum et forte praecelluisse in eloquendo?” 3 Jerome, Epistulae 58.10: “Lactantius quasi quidam fluvius eloquentiae Tullianae, utinam tam nostra affirmare potuisset, quam facile aliena destruxit.”

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��5 | doi ��.��63/9789004290549_005 Lactantius as Christian Cicero 57 writings, but to my mind the apologist’s chief theoretical merits reside in a doctrine of divine providence that is far distant from the thought of Cicero’s philosophical dialogues.4 Nevertheless, in this essay I will claim that in a cer- tain sense one can consider Lactantius as the Christian Cicero and that in this sense, the apologist deliberately prepared the label for himself.5 The first section is devoted to showing how important a role the father of Roman elo- quence played in Lactantius’ self-reflection and how the latter emphasizes his dissent from Cicero, by correcting, debating with, and emulating him. The sec- ond will deal with Lactantius’ controversy with Cicero about the value of phi- losophy as praised in Cicero’s Tusculans and On Duties, and critiqued in Divine Institutes book 3. In the third, I will show how Lactantius implicates Cicero’s De Republica while addressing the question of why justice has the semblance of foolishness in the Divine Institutes, and, in this context, the fourth, will exam- ine more specifically “the two ways,” the pagan way of wisdom (via sapientiae) and that of Christian foolishness (via stultitiae). Throughout, my intention is— by speaking about the appropriation of a rhetor by a rhetor—to follow the process of persuasion, and thus to find the place of Cicero in it.6

1 Cicero’s Place in Lactantius’ Self-Reflection as an Apologist

As early as in the De opificio Dei, a crypto-Christian treatise written in 303/4, the Ciceronian inspiration is obvious. Here the apologist not only took a huge part of the doxographical matériel from the De natura deorum,7 but drew, by his own account, the idea of proving the divine providence from the teleo- logical functioning of both the body and the soul predominantly from the same dialogue. What is more, he considers himself as accomplishing boldly (audaciter) the project that the great precursor left uncompleted.8 The most

4 See e.g., “Metaphorical Approach in Lactantius’ Theology and Cosmology” Studia Patristica vol. XLII. (ed. F. Young, M. Edwards, P. Parvis), Peeters, Leuven-Paris-Dudley MA, 2006, 391– 397. “Remarks on Lactantius’ Dualistic system” (accepted for publication in Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, 51, 2016), 3. 5 Some of my new considerations have been inspired by Blandine Colot’s habilitation dissertation. 6 To do this, I was inspired in a large measure by the above mentioned habilitation dissertation of B. Colot: “Penser la conversion de Rome,” 2013. 7 Especially for chapters 7–15. See Perrin 1974, 42–4; 295–377. Lactance, L’ouvrage de Dieu Créateur, tom I–II. Introduction, texte critique, traduction et notes par M. Perrin, Sources Chrétiennes 204–205, Paris 1974. Cf. J. Bryce, The Library of Lactantius, 107–121. 8 In the preface (opif. 1.12–14.) Lactantius complains that Cicero, “this man of exceptional talent”, treated this topic just summarily and superficially not only in the book 4 of the