Author: Mike Aquilina

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Links to St. Nick

Jeff Ziegler gives us these feast-day links on St. Nicholas:

— Today is … the optional memorial of St. Nicholas, (d. fourth cent.), bishop, patron of children, bankers, pawnbrokers, sailors, perfumers, brides, unmarried women, travelers, fishermen, dockworkers, brewers, poets, prisoners, Russia, Greece, Sicily, Lorraine, and Apulia.
— Pope Benedict in Bari (2005), where the saint’s relics are venerated.
— Beato Angelico, “Stories of St Nicholas of Bari.”

And I posted this post last month, on The Original North Pole.

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Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bishop

There’s a certain kind of Catholic who likes nothing more than a good inter-Christian tussle. Their model, among the ancient Christians, is no doubt St. Nicholas of Myra, whose feast day we celebrate today. He reportedly punched the heretic Arius in the nose at the Council of Nicea. (Yes, I mean Santa Claus. And the story goes that a profusion of blood came forth from Arius. “Happy holidays, infidel.”)

Now, don’t get me wrong: I have a great devotion to St. Nicholas. In fact, he’s one of the handful of saints whose intercession I invoke every day of my life. But his was not the only way the Church Fathers approached ecumenism.

Consider Pope Zephyrinus, in the second century. In the midst of fierce persecution from imperial Rome, the poor guy also had to face heresies and moral lapses within the Church. The situation grew to scandal proportions, but he endured it patiently. In fact, some rigorists thought he was far too patient with heretics and sinners. The rigorists’ own holy impatience soon turned ugly — and unholy — as they declared the Pope anathema and the worldwide Church his “sect.” (I love it — the sect of the Catholics.) Meanwhile, they dubbed their own little congregation “the Catholic Church.” They elected history’s first antipope — a man who, in his rather extreme aggression, tended to over-correct the errors of the heretics and fall into the heresies on the opposite side of the tracks.

St. Zephyrinus remained steady and orthodox. He knew when to pull his punches, just as St. Nicholas allegedly knew when to throw them. As someone once said, there is “a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace” (Eccl 3:7-8).

Still today, it’s easy for armchair pontiffs to grumble about the perceived weaknesses of the real popes. It’s the real ones who have the thankless job of discerning the seasons of the carrot and the seasons of the stick. We should avoid grumbling and learn patience from history.

The Church of the Fathers suffered many divisions — schisms, heresies, and outright apostasies. There were certainly occasions for excommunication, but prayer for unity was always in season. And we can be sure that all those prayers of the Fathers will one day be answered. Many, in fact, were answered, in short order and rather definitively, as the ancient heresies exhausted themselves. Sometimes it took centuries, but the Montanists, Marcionites, Arians, Apollinarians, and Monothelites all went the way of the wooly mammoth.

One of the most painful divisions in Christian antiquity was the schism that rent the “Persian” East from the “Roman” West. It happened with the Nestorian schism in the fifth century, when a serious doctrinal dispute gained further momentum from cultural and political tensions. The division has lasted now for a millennium and a half.

There are Catholics, no doubt, who would consider this division a “cold case,” meriting no further attention. But Pope John Paul II chose to give it his closest attention. He encouraged the dialogue. And in 1994, he signed a “Common Christological Declaration” with Patriarch Mar Dinkha IV of the Church of the East, essentially resolving “the main dogmatic problem between the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church.” In 2001, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity went a step further and approved the sharing of Communion between the (Catholic) Chaldean Church and the (so-called Nestorian) Assyrian Church of the East.

We should marvel that reconciliation should proceed so swiftly after a millennium and a half of alienation. We should marvel at the stunning fact of intercommunion. And, again, we should learn from history: ecumenism proceeds best on God’s schedule, not ours.

We should pray for unity. And we should rest assured, as the Fathers did, that our prayer will be answered; for it is the prayer of Jesus (see Jn 17:11).

Oh, and it’s probably best if we hold our punches. That pugilistic Santa Claus story is almost unique in ancient Church history, and scholars tell us it’s of dubious origin anyway.

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Promising Find

From MSNBC:

Last month, Syrian media reported the discovery of a Roman-era cross-shaped limestone cemetery in the Nasiriya area in the remote Hasaka province, some 440 miles northeast of Damascus, dating from the third century. The graveyard also contained coins, pottery shards and bracelets dating to the later Aramaic era.

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John Strugnell, R.I.P.

Dr. Jim West posted an obituary for Dr. John Strugnell, former editor-in-chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls and emeritus professor of Christian origins at Harvard. Strugnell was a member of the original team charged with reassembling and translating the fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls. He was a convert to the Roman Catholic faith. May he rest in the peace of Christ.

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Goodness Gracious, He’s on to Chromatius

Pope Benedict continues his Wednesday teachings on the Church Fathers. This unofficial translation is from Teresa Benedetta:

Dear brothers and sisters!

In the last catecheses, we made an excursion to the Semitic-speaking Churches of the East, meditating on the Persian Aphraates and the Syrian St. Ephrem. Today, we return to the Latin world, in the North of the Roman Empire, with St. Chromatius of Aquileia.

This bishop carried out his ministry in the ancient Church of Aquileia, fervent center of Christian life in the tenth region of the Roman Empire, which was composed of Venetia and Histria.

In 368, when Chromatius ascended the episcopal seat of the city, the local Christian community had already matured with a glorious history of loyalty to the Gospel. Between the middle of the third century and the beginning of the fourth, the persecutions of Decius, Valerian and Diocletian had reaped a great number of martyrs.

Moreover, the Church of Aquileia was threatened like many other churches at the time by the Arian heresy. Athanasius himself – standard bezarer of the Nicene Creed, whom the Arians had chased into exile – found refuge in Aquileia for a time. Under the leadership of its bishops, the Christian community resisted the snares of heresy, reinforcing its adherence to the Catholic faith.

In September 381, Aquileia was the site of a Synod which convened 35 bishops from the African coast, the valley of the Rhone, and all of the empire’s tenth region. The Synod was called to vanquish the last traces of Arianism in the West.

Taking part in the Synod was the priest Chromatius, as an expert for the Bishop of Aquileia, Valerian (370/1-387/8). The years around the Syond of 381 constituted the ‘golden age’ of the Aquileian community.

St. Jerome, who was a native of Dalmatia, and Rufinus of Concord, spoke with nostalgia about their stay in Aquileia (370-373), in that sort of theoligical cenacle which Jerome did not hesitate to define as tanquam chorus beatorum – like a choir of blessed ones’ (Cronaca: PL XXVII,697-698).

This cenacle – which recalled in certain aspects the communal experiments carried out by Eusebius of Vercelli and by Augustine – formed the most noteworthy personages of the Churches of the Upper Adriatic region.

Already within his family, Chromatius had learned to know and love Christ. St. Jerome himself spoke about this with great admiration, likening Chromatius’s mother to the prophetess Anna, his two sisters to the prudent virgins of the Gospel parable, Chromatius himself and his brother Eusebius to the young Samuel (cfr Ep VII: PL XXII,341).

Of Chromatius and Eusebius, Jerome further wrote: “The blessed Chromatius and St. Eusebius were brothers by blood but not less in the identity of their ideals” ((Ep. VIII: PL XXII,342).

Chromatius was born in Aquileia around 345. He was ordained deacon and later priest, finally being elected Pastor of that Church, around 388. After receiving his episcopal ordination from Bishop Ambrose, he dedicated himself with courage and energy to a task that was enormous for the sheer vastness of the terriotry entrusted to his ministry: the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Aqwuileia extended from northern Italy to the territories of present-day Switzerland, Bavaria, Austria and Slovenia, up to the borders of Hungary.

One can deduce how well-known and respected Chromatius was in the Churches of his time from an episode in the life of St. John Chyrsostom. When the Bishop of Constantinople was exiled from his seat, he wrote three letters to those he considered the most important Bishops of the West, to ask them to get him support from the emperors – he wrote one to the Bishop of Rome, the second to the Bishop of Milan, and the third to the Bishop of Aquileia, Chromatius.

But even for Chromatius, those were difficult times because of the precarious political situation. Most probably, he died in exile, in Grado, while he was trying to flee from barbarian incursions in 407, the same year when the Chrysostom also died.

In prestige and importance, Aquileia was the fourth in the Italian peninsula, and the ninth in the Roman empire – which made it a target for the Goths and the Huns. Besides causing grave wars and destruction, the barbarian invasions seriously compromised the transmission of the works of the Fathers preserved in the episcopal library which had a wealth of codices.

And so, even the writings of St. Chromatius were dispersed here and there, often ending up being attributed to other authors such as John Chrysostom (mostly because both names started with ‘Chr’), or Augustine or Ambrose, or even Jerome himself, whom Chromatius had helped a lot in the textual review and Latin translation of the Bible.

The rediscovery of a great part of Chromatius’s work is owed to happy and fortunate circumstances that in recent years has allowed a reconstruction of a body of writing that is quite consistent: more than 40 sermons, about 10 of which are fragmentary, and more than 60 treatises of commentary on the Gospel of Matthew.

Chromatius was a wise teacher and zealous pastor. His first and primary task was to listen to the Word in order to be able to annouce it himself. In his teachings, he always started with the Word of God and led back up to it. Some themes were particularly dear to him: above all, the mystery of the Trinity, reflecting on it, as it is revealed throughout the history of salvation.

Then, the subject of the Holy Spirit: Chromatius constantly called the attention of the faithful to the presence and action int he life of the Church of the Third Person in the Most Holy Trinity.

But Chromatius was particularly persistent on the mystery of Christ: The Word incarnate as true God and true man, who assumed complete humanity to make a gift of his own divinity. These truths, which he insistently reaffirmed even for anti-Arian purposes, would come to be formalized 50 years later in the Council of Chalcedon.

His strong emphasis on the human nature of Christ led Chromatius to speak often of the Virgin Mary: his Mariologic doctrine was terse and precise. To him we owe some evocative descriptions of the Most Holy Virgin: Mary is the “evangelical virgin who was capable of sheltering God”; she is the ‘immaculate and inviolate lamb’ who gave birth to ‘the lamb draped in red’ (cfr Sermo XXIII,3: Scrittori dell’area santambrosiana 3/1, p. 134).

The Bishop of Aquileia often spoke of the Virgin in relation to the Church: both, in fact, are ‘virgins’ and ‘mothers’. But his ecclesiology was developed above all in his commentaries on the Gospel of Matthew.

Here are some of his recurrent concepts: the church is unique; it was born from the blood of Christ; it is a precious garment woven by the Holy Spirit; the Church is the place which proclaims that Christ was born of the Virgin and where brotherhood and concord flourish.

An image that Chromatius was particularly fond of was that of a ship at sea in a storm – he lived in tempetuous times, as we heard earlier: “There is no doubt,” the holy Bishop said, “that this ship represents the Church.” (cfr Tract. XLII,5: Scrittori dell’area santambrosiana 3/2, p. 260).

As the zealous pastor that he was, Chromatius knew how to speak to his people in a language that was fresh, colorful and incisive. Although he knew Latin perfectly, he prefered to use popular language which was rich in easily understandable images.

Thus, for example, using the sea as a metaphor, he contrasts, on the one hand, the act of fishing in which fish, once out of the water, die; and on the other, the preaching of the gospel, thanks to which men are saved from the muddy waters of death and introduced to true life (cfr Tract. XVI,3: Scrittori dell’area santambrosiana 3/2, p. 106).

Still looking at him as a good pastor, who lived in a stormy era darkened by barbarian incursions, he placed himself alongside his flock to comfort them and open up their spirits to trust in God, who never abandones his children.

Let us pick up, at the end of these reflections, an exhortation of Chromatius which is still perfectly valid today: “Let us pray to the Lord with all our heart and all our faith,” the Bishop of Aquileia, recommended in one of his Sermons. “Let us pray that he may liberate us from every incursion by enemies, from every fear of adversaries. He does not look at our merits – he who in the past deigned to liberate the children of Israel not because of their merits but by his mercy. May he protect us with his usual merciful love, and work for us what the holy Moses told the children of Israel: ‘The Lord will fight in your defense, and you will remain silent. It is him who fights, it is him who gains victory’…And so that he may deign to do this, we must pray as much as we can. He himself tells us through the prophet’s mouth: I will liberate you, and you will give me glory.” (Sermo XVI,4: Scrittori dell’area santambrosiana 3/1, pp. 100-102).

Thus, at the start of Advent, St. Chromatius reminds us that Advent is a time of prayer, in which we must enter into contact with God. God knows us, he knows me, he knows each of us, he wishes me well, he will not abandon me.

Let us move forward with such confidence in God during this liturgical period that has just begun.

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Mosaic Covenant

A few days back I reported the discovery of a patristic-era synagogue in Israel. According to Haaretz, the workmanship is causing historians and archeologists to “rethink Byzantine-era Judaism.” (Some day soon we’ll also get around to rethinking the alleged “anti-Semitism” of the Fathers.)

Rethinking Byzantine-era Judaism

By Ran Shapira

A row of artisans and laborers – one with a saw in his hand, another with a chisel, and others with various sized hammers – are depicted on the mosaic floor recently uncovered in a Roman- or Byzantine-era synagogue at Khirbet Wadi Hamam, on Mount Nitai in the Lower Galilee. The workers appear next to a very large building, which they seem to be constructing.

Because the image appears on the synagogue floor, the researchers have assumed it depicts the construction of an important Biblical structure. Is it the Temple, Noah’s Ark, the Tower of Babel, or some other well-known work?

Dr. Uzi Leibner of the Hebrew University’s Institute of Archaeology and Scholion Interdisciplinary Research Center in Jewish Studies, who is leading the excavation, has no clear answer at this stage. What is clear is that the mosaic, constructed from very small stones – whose sides measure about four millimeters each – is unique. No such scenes have been found in other ancient synagogues or structures in Israel from that period. But which period exactly are we referring to – the Roman or the Byzantine? The dig at the synagogue is being carried out to answer that question.

To judge by the findings, the synagogue, which sits within the Arbel National Park, is a “Galilean synagogue” – a high-quality Romanesque structure with an elaborate facade facing toward Jerusalem and attractive stone carvings. Synagogues of this type were thought to date from the late Roman period, between the second and fourth centuries. However, in the last few years, researchers have discovered that synagogues of this type were built in the Byzantine era, too – between the fifth and sixth centuries.

The debate was sparked by the synagogue at Capernaum, a fine example of a Galilean synagogue that clearly was built in the fifth century. The findings from that synagogue and others led some researchers to consider the hypothesis that the Galilean synagogues were built mainly in the fifth and sixth centuries.

Contradictory evidence

On the face of it, this theory contradicts everything known about Judaism in the beginning of the first millennium C.E., and its relations with the ruling empires at the time. The common wisdom is that Jewish settlement flourished in the Galilee in the late Roman era – Rabbi Yehuda Hanassi compiled the Mishna at Zippori, and remarkable public buildings were constructed in many Jewish communities. However, from the mid-fourth century, when the Christian Byzantine empire rose to power, Jewish life was hampered, and some of the laws at that time even forbade the establishment of synagogues.

However, the archaeological findings from Capernaum and other synagogues indicate that things were more complex than historical records may indicate. More evidence now supports the theory that most of the Galilean synagogues actually were built during the Byzantine period, and that their Romanesque components were initially parts of earlier structures.

The synagogue at Khirbet Wadi Hamam was large and elaborate. It had a long hall running from north to south, of which about one quarter was exposed in the last excavation season, with a southern facade facing Jerusalem. The hall contained three rows of columns, and had two rows of benches along the northern, western and eastern walls.

The uniqueness of the building lies not only in its mosaic floor, but also in its combination of basalt and limestone. The walls were built from layers of basalt topped by layers of limestone; the stone benches incorporated limestone as well. The researchers believe the limestone was integrated into the structure during a massive repair. As in other Galilean synagogues, this one also contains late Roman-era architectural details – most of them also from limestone. However, the researchers believe that the signs of renovation could indicate the structure was actually built at a later stage, and that these items actually were part of an earlier structure.

The synagogue lies inside a large village, of more than 50 dunams, one of the larger, late Roman-era and Byzantine-era Jewish villages discovered in the rural Galilee. It is located strategically above the source of the Arbel river and the ancient road that wound from the Kinneret basin to the Lower Galilee and from there, via the Beit Netofa valley, to the Mediterranean sea.

Not far away were two large, well-known communities – Kfar Arbel and Migdal – as well as the big Jewish centers of the period, Tiberias and Zippori. Despite all these facts, the original name of the community was not preserved there, and it is still unknown. Findings indicate the village was abandoned permanently in the fourth century. Researchers are hoping to learn at what stage the synagogue, with its unique mosaic floor, was built.

Judging by other buildings unearthed close to the synagogue – an oil press and a two-story dwelling – the residents of the village were fairly well-off. The homes in the community were built on terraces along the slopes of the hill, separated by lanes. Since the village apparently was abandoned in the fourth century – which contradicts the claim that the synagogue dates to the Byzantine era – that period’s architecture can be examined without interference from later structures. Leibner believes the synagogue could be a test case that would help researchers improve their dating methods for Galilean synagogues. In the upcoming excavation seasons, he says he intends to find more clues that would provide a precise date, and thus possibly solve the riddle.

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The Syriac Churches and Islam

My friend David Mills passed this on, from Asia News.

The tradition of the Syriac Churches, an instrument of dialogue with Islam
 
Salzburg (AsiaNews) – Benefactors of a centuries-old tradition in co-existence alongside Muslims, the ancient Syriac Churches have an important role to play today regarding dialogue, Christian witness and cooperation.

That was the conclusion drawn from a conference which took place between November 14 and 16 in Salzburg Austria organised by Pro Oriente, a foundation of the Vienna Archdiocese which gave birth to Pro Oriente Forum Syriacum in October 2006.

It gathers together academics from the Syriac Churches with an aim to promoting its legacy and work towards improving understanding, cultural enrichment and solidarity.

“Syriac Churches Encountering Islam: Past Experiences and Future Perspectives“, was the theme of the first academic encounter, which involved scholars from Iraq, Syria, United Sates,

Austria, Germany, Holland, Italy, India and France. The conclusions drawn are based on the affirmation that from the very beginning Islam entered into close contact with Christianity of the Syro-Aramaic tradition.

The early Umayyad period is marked by an open and tolerant attitude towards Christians.

One of the main reasons might have been that the Muslims needed their administrative and economic knowledge and experience to rule and organize the newly conquered territories (for instance St. John Damascene and his father).

In the attitude of Muslims towards Christians, very soon one can realize certain ambivalence according to the social and political circumstances: At times more open and tolerant, at times more aggressive and even oppressive.

This ambivalence is easily justified by different Koranic verses. Texts concerning Islam written in Syriac (about 20) were mainly for internal use in Christian communities in order to educate and strengthen them in their own faith and to help them respond to certain questions and objections raised by Muslims.

Those written in Arabic were approaches to present Christian dogmas and moral to Muslims. Some of them are of an apologetic nature, and others are clearly polemical.

The Abbasid period inaugurates a time of wide and fertile cultural exchange as a consequence of the spread of the Arabic language. Commissioned by the caliphs (bayt al-hikma-house of wisdom), mainly Christians of the Syriac tradition undertook huge systematic translations – especially in the fields of Science, Philosophy, and Medicine – from Greek via Syriac into Arabic.

In this way the knowledge of the Greco-Roman world was made available as one of the foundation for the development of the Arabo-Islamic culture. Through the Arabic presence in Spain this heritage was transmitted to the European Christian Middle Ages.

There’s more detail at Asia News. Several papers dealt with the patristic era: “Syriacisms in the Arabic Qur’an” (Sidney Griffith); “The Syriac Churches in the Umayyad Period (661-750)” (Mor Gregorios Yohanna Ibrahim, Aleppo, Syria); Christian Responses to Islam in the Umayyad Period (661-750) (Dietmar W. Winkler, Salzburg, Austria).

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Text Support

A fascinating, relatively new site, Early Church Texts

– gives access to a wide range of resources for those who wish to learn and know about Early Church History;

– has English translations (alongside original Greek and Latin texts) of important texts from the first five centuries of the life of the Church

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Archeological Updates

In Israel, archeologists found the remains of a Byzantine synagogue, with lovely mosaics intact. News reports say that this find could change our reading of the status of Jews in that corner of the Christian empire, during that century.

Archaeologists differ among themselves as to which period the ancient Galilean synagogues belong. The generally accepted view is that they can be attributed to the later Roman period (second to fourth centuries C.E.), a time of cultural and political flowering of the Jews of the Galilee. Recently, some researchers have come to believe that these synagogues were built mainly during the Byzantine period (fifth and sixth centuries C.E.), a time in which Christianity rose to power and, it was thought, the Jews suffered from persecution. Dr. Leibner noted that this difference of scholarly opinion has great significance in perhaps redrawing the historical picture of Jews in those ancient times.

Meanwhile in Rome the diggers are still pondering the cave they found at the beginning of the year, that may or may not be the Lupercale, the cave where Rome’s mythological founders, Romulus and Remus, were nursed by the she-wolf who adopted them. For the early Christians, Rome’s old founders evoked the new city’s new founders. Pope Benedict drew on his predecessor, Leo the Great, as he announced the upcoming Year of St. Paul:

Like Romulus and Remus, the two mythical brothers who are said to have given birth to the City, so Peter and Paul were held to be the founders of the Church of Rome.

Speaking to the City on this topic, St Leo the Great said: “These are your holy Fathers and true shepherds, who gave you claims to be numbered among the heavenly kingdoms, and built you under much better and happier auspices than they, by whose zeal the first foundations of your walls were laid” (Sermon 82, 7).

However humanly different they may have been from each other and despite the tensions that existed in their relationship, Peter and Paul appear as the founders of a new City, the expression of a new and authentic way of being brothers which was made possible by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

For this reason, it can be said that the Church of Rome is celebrating her birthday today, since it was these two Apostles who laid her foundations.

As far as we know, Peter and Paul did their suckling in the normal way.