Category: Patristics

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More on the New Augustine Sermons

Constanze Witt of the Department Of Classics at the University of Texas posted the following to a medieval list.

Not all sensational finds come out of the ground! Augustine scholars will be delighted at the news of 6 previously unknown sermons’ being discovered through a library “excavation” in Erfurt’s Bibliotheca Amploniana. Isabella Schiller and colleagues from the Austrian Academy of Sciences discovered these works while studying an 800-year-old manuscript in the summer of 2007.

Concealed in a medieval parchment manuscript amongst 70 other religious texts are ca. 26 sermons attributed to Augustine, 3 of them on brotherly love and alms-giving. These were known previously only by their titles cited in Possidius’ Indiculum. One sermon is on the martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas, and another on the recently martyred Cyprian, the latter of which condemns the copious drinking that took place on saints’ feast days. The final sermon deals with resurrection of the dead and biblical prophecies.

The 12th c. mss came from England(?) to Erfurt as part of the enormous collection of more than 630 books donated by the physician and theologue Amplonius Rating de Berka to the ‘Collegium Amplonianum’ which he founded in 1412.

For 24 amazing images of this absolutely pristine and gorgeous codex, see here.

The 6 new sermons will be published in Wiener Studien. Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie und Patristik und lateinische Tradition
Sermones Erfurt 1, 5, and 6 in Bd. 121 (2008), pp. 227-284.
Sermones Erfurt 2, 3 and 4 in Bd. 122 (2009)
They can now be viewed on display in the Sondersammlung der UB Erfurt für Foto- und Filmaufnahmen. Several public lectures are
planned in the coming weeks.

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Stop the Presses! Six “New” Augustine Sermons Found!

Adrian Murdoch (late of the blog Bread and Circuses) sends us the following press release, which my co-author Chris Bailey translated from the German. If you can read German, follow the link. There are pictures, too.

Dear Listers:

Allow me to inform you that six unknown genuine lectures of the famous early-Christian Church teacher Augustine (d. 430), bishop of Hippo Regius (which is now in Algeria), have been discovered recently in the university and research library in Erfurt by three researchers from the Austrian Academy of the Sciences, Vienna. The manuscript is more than 800 years old.

Isabella Schiller, Dorothea Weber, and Clemens Weidmann have succeeded in identifying four completely new and two until-now incompletely known lectures of the famous Church father Augustine in a medieval manuscript of the “Bibliotheca Amploniana.” The Pergament Manuscript, marked Dep. Erf. Ca. 12th 11, was written in the second half of the 12th century, probably in England, and contains, altogether, more than 70 different lectures of different late-antique and medieval theologians.

For more information:

http://www.uni-erfurt.de/presse/archiv/pressemitteilungen/2008/doc/49_08.htm

Yours sincerely,
Brigitte Pfeil

And, of course: Tolle, lege.

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Going Out in Tile

Tree of Paradise: Jewish Mosaics from the Roman Empire is on display at McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, through June 8. The artworks exemplify the common visual language shared by Jews, pagans, and Christians.

Three spectacular mosaic panels remain from a Creation vignette section: a large fish, a dolphin, and a duck. Most of the floor has been laid out symmetrically, but not this dynamic area. In the watercolor, vines or ropes spin from the mouths of the fish and the dolphin, suggesting they have been caught and will perhaps be served, according to Jewish tradition, when the messiah comes.

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Marinade in the Maronite

The Society of St. John Chrysostom promotes ecumenical dialogue of the east-west variety. Most members belong to Orthodox or Catholic churches. I’ve had the honor of speaking twice in the lecture series of the Youngstown-Warren, Ohio Chapter.

Next up in the series is Msgr. Anthony Spinosa, rector of the Shrine of Our Lady of Lebanon in North Jackson, Ohio. He will speak April 1 at 7 p.m. on the subject of the Maronite divine liturgy. The talk takes place at the shrine, which is at 2759 North Lipkey Road. For information, call 330-755-5635.

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Throop Movements

While I was in Rome, I got the following query from Ryan McDermott, “Medievalist-in-training.” Can anyone help him?

I just received the two volumes of Priscilla Throop’s translation of Isidore’s Etymologies. From a brief once-over, it looks like a very impressive piece of scholarship. I’ll still probably have to quote from the recent Cambridge translation, since that will probably take on the status of definitive edition, but for a reading copy, this is great. And I actually think only copies affordable to grad students should be the standard works to quote from–provided, of course, the editing and translation are up to snuff.

Here’s a question for the blogosphere: who is Priscilla Throop? Who would engage in a labor of love like this, with no hope of profit, and without the usual academic incentives for such thankless tasks? And who is the handsome man in the small picture on the back cover of the Isidore translations? It’s definitely not Isidore! (Could it be Patrick Stewart??)