If you visit often, you’ve heard me gush about the work of the Society of St. John Chrysostom (Youngstown-Warren, Ohio Chapter). The society 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 their lecture series (though I am not worthy to fasten the sandalstrap of the other speakers).

Next up is Dominican Father Giles Dimock, who will speak on Summorium Pontificium, the recent motu proprio of Pope Benedict XVI dealing with the liturgy. Father Giles will consider how the implementation of the motu proprio might influence east-west ecumenical dialogue. The meeting is Tuesday, January 15, at 7 p.m. as St. Dominic’s Church, 77 E. Lucius Ave., Youngstown.

Hope you can make it!

Here’s a nice quote from SSJC’s most recent e-newsletter. It’s from Thomas Merton’s journal, April 28, 1957:

I can unite in myself, in my own spiritual life, the thought of the East and the West, of the Greek and Latin Fathers, I will create in myself a reunion of the divided Church and from that unity in myself can come the exterior and visible unity of the Church. For if we want to bring together East and West we cannot do it by imposing one upon the other. We must contain both in ourselves, and transcend both in Christ.

It has been many years — far too many years — since the English-reading world has had a comprehensive, single-volume, academic textbook on the study of the Church Fathers. At last, it’s here, in Hubertus Drobner’s The Fathers of the Church.

Drobner is professor of Church history and patrology at the University of Paderborn, Germany. His text first appeared in German in 1994 and has since become a standard work. Drobner concentrates on the major figures of Christian antiquity, the saints and the arch-heretics, and he sifts as only a true encyclopedist can. Thus, the book will be useful not only as an introductory text, but also as a reference work — a handy source of names, dates, and places.

The Fathers of the Church is organized chronologically, in four sections: Apostolic and Postapostolic Literature; Literature of the Period of Persecution (Mid-Second to Early Fourth Centuries); Literature of the Ascending Imperial Church (Early Fourth Century to ca. 430); Literature of the Transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (ca. 430 to the Mid-Eighth Century). Each of the sections is further divided according to controversies, genres, events, or historical currents. Within these divisions, Drobner profiles each of the major Fathers. A fifth section provides an overview of Literature of the Christian East, which surveys the Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, Georgian, Arabic, and Paleoslavic traditions — outside the dominant cultures of ancient Christianity.

There are excellent accounts of historical events such as the accession of Constantine, the Council of Nicaea, and substantial treatments of the development of the major Christian schools. Drobner examines the heresies in detail, and always as heresies rather than “alternative Christianities.” Drobner’s doctrinal frankness — his hermeneutic of faith — is refreshing and sets his work apart from the usual run of politically correct studies of early Church history.

The heart and soul of the book, though, are the profiles of the Fathers. Each begins with a biographical sketch before proceeding to overviews of the individual’s works, sometimes organized by genre, sometimes by theological themes. Each section is followed by ample bibliography, which is further supplemented at the end of the book.

History buffs and academics have long awaited this volume. The book arrived almost two years after its originally scheduled press date. It is clear that the extra time was well spent, as the Hendrickson edition is more than a translation. Some material has been updated in light of more recent scholarship. And the bibliographies have been adapted (by William Harmless, S.J.) to emphasize studies and texts available in English.

Drobner’s Fathers of the Church will, in some ways, take the place of Johannes Quasten’s multivolume Patrology, which is now many decades old. Drobner’s great virtue, however, is his only great shortcoming. To squeeze all of Christian antiquity into one volume — and call it an introduction — requires an heroic effort of compression. Inevitably, some saints get squeezed out; and history buffs and academics alike will take issue with some of Drobner’s de-selections (Prudentius?! Paulinus of Nola?!). But that’s part of the fun of reading a book like this.

So, despite the word “comprehensive” in the subtitle, students of patrology should still keep their Quastens close at hand for the small detail.

But thank God that Drobner’s well bound in hardcover, because it’s going to be well-used!

(Rico has also posted a few words on Drobner’s book, including some criticism in an area that’s far beyond my ken.)

Roger Pearse has posted an English translation of the Gelasian decree, a document of (perhaps) the fifth or sixth century, and one of the early attempts to specify who’s a Church Father and who’s not. Scroll down to Roman numeral IV.

The pope delivered the first in a planned series of addresses on St. Augustine. Here’s Teresa Benedetta‘s translation:

Dear brothers and sisters:

After the major Christmas festivities, I wish to return to our meditations on the Fathers of the Church and speak today of the greatest Father of the Latin Church, Saint Augustine.

A man of passion and faith, of supreme intelligence and tireless pastoral concern, this great saint and doctor of the Church is quite known, at least by fame, even to those who know nothing of Christianity or have not been exposed to it, because he has left a most profound imprint on the cultural life of the West and of all the world.

For his singular relevance, St. Augustine has had a vast influence. It can be said, on the one hand, that all the roads of Christian literature in Latin led to Hippo (today Annaba, on the coast of Algiers), the place where he was bishop; and on the other, that from that city of Roman Africa, where he was bishop from 395 until he died in 430, many other roads of Christianity and of Western culture itself branched out successively.

Often a civilization finds a spirit so great that embodies its values and exalts its intrinsic riches, inventing ideas and forms that would nourish posterity, as Paul VI underscored once: “One can say that all the thought of antiquity converged in his work and from it came currents of thinking that pervade all the doctrinal tradition of succeeding centuries” (AAS, 62, 1970, p. 26).

Augustine is also the Father of the Church who has left us the greatest number of works. His biographer Possidius said it was impossible to think that one man could write so much in one lifetime.

We will speak about these different works in future meetings.

Today, our attention shall be on his life, which can be reconstructed very well from his writings, especially from his Confessions, that extraordinary spiritual autobiography, written in praise of God, which is his most famous work.

Rightly so, because the Augustinian Confessions, with their attention to interiority and psychology, constituting a unique model in Western literature, is not only Western, and not even merely religious, but is also quite modern.

This attention to the spiritual life, to the mystery of the ego, the mystery of God which is hidden in that I, is extraordinary and unprecedented, and which will always remain, so to speak, a spiritual ‘summit’.

But to get back to his life: Augustine was born in Tagaste – in the province of Numidia, Roman Africa – on November 13, 354, to Patricius, a pagan who later became a catechumen, and Monica, a fervent Christian.

This passionate woman, venerated as a saint, exercised a very great influence on her son whom she educated in the Christian faith. Augustine received the salt that was a sign of acceptance to the catechumenate [those preparing for baptism].

He was always fascinated by the figure of Jesus. In fact, he says he had always loved Jesus, but that he grew ever farther away from the ecclesial faith, from ecclesial practice, which happens to many young people today.

Augustine had a brother, Navigius, and a sister whose name we do not know and who, after she was widowed, became the head of a female monastery.

The young Augustine, with a lively intelligence, received a good education, even if he was not always an exemplary student. Nonetheless, he studied grammar well, first in his native city, then in Madaura, and from 370, he studied rhetoric in Carthage, capital of Roman Africa.

He came to have perfect mastery of the Latin language, although he did not manage to gain the same mastery of Greek, and he never learned Punic, the language of his homeland.

It was in Carthage that he first read Hortensius, written by Cicero but since lost, which started Augustine on his road to conversion. The Ciceronian text awakened in him a love for wisdom, as he would write, as Bishop, in Confessions: “That book truly changed my way of thinking”, such that “suddenly every vain hope lost value and I desired, with incredible ardor, the immortality of wisdom” (III, 4,7).

But since he was convinced that without Jesus, one cannot say that one has really found the truth, and because in that fascinating book (Hortensius), Jesus was lacking, immediately after reading it, he started to read Scriptures, the Bible.

But he was disappointed. Not only because he found the Latin translation inadequate, but also because he found the contents themselves unsatisfactory. The Scripture narratives on wars and other human events did not reach the heights of philosophy nor have the splendor of the search for truth which he thought was appropriate.

Nevertheless, he did not wish to live without God, and so he looked for a religion that would answer his desire for truth and his desire to come close to Jesus.

And so he fell into the net of the Manichaeans, who presented themselves as Christians and promised a completely rational religion. They affirmed that the world is divided into two principles, good and evil, and that this explained all the complexities of human history.

Augustine liked the dualistic morality because it demanded very high morals of the ‘elect’- and for those who, like him, allowed a life that was very appropriate to the times, especially for a young man. So he became a Manichaean, convinced at the time that he had found the synthesis of reason, search for truth and love of Jesus Christ.

It even had a concrete advantage for his own life: belonging to the Manichaeans opened up easy career prospects. To belong to a religion which counted with many influential personages also allowed him to continue a relationship he had started with a woman and to advance in his career.

With the lady, he had a son, Adeodatus, whom he loved very much, was highly intelligent, and would later be present a Augustine’s preparation for baptism near Lake Como, taking part in those Dialogues that St. Augustine has left us. The boy, unfortunately, died early.

After teaching grammar for almost 20 years in his native city, Augustine returned to Carthage where he became a brilliant and celebrated teacher of rhetoric. In time, he started to grow away from Manichaeism, which disillusioned him precisely from the intellectual point of view, since it was unable to resolve his doubts.

He therefore went to Rome and later Milan, where the imperial court resided then, and where he obtained a prestigious post thanks to the interest and recommendation of the Prefect of Rome, the pagan
Simmacus, who was hostile to the Bishop of Milan, Ambrose.

In Milan, Augustine developed the habit of listening – initially, with the goal of enriching his own rhetorical lore – to the beautiful preachings of Bishop Ambrose, who was the imperial representative for northern Italy. The African rhetoric master was fascinated by the great Milanese prelate – not only for his rhetoric, but above all, because what he said touched him to the heart more and more.

A major problem with the Old Testament – its lack of rhetorical beauty and of philosophical elevation – was resolved in Ambrose’s preaching, thanks to his typological interpretation. Augustine understood then that the Old Testament is a way to Jesus Christ.

So he found the key to perceive the philosophical beauty and profundity of the Old Testament and understood the unity of the mystery of Christ with history, and even that synthesis of philosophy, reason and faith in the Logos, Christ the eternal Word made flesh.

Before long, Augustine realized that the allegorical reading of Scriptures and the neo-Platonic philosophy practised by the Bishop of Milan allowed him to resolve the intellectual difficulties which, when he first approached the Biblical texts when he was younger, seemed to be insurmountable.

Thus, Augustine followed up his readings of the philosophers with a rereading of Scriptures, especially the Pauline letters. His conversion to Christianity, on August 15, 386, was therefore the culmination of a long and tormented interior itinerary, about which we shall talk further in a future catechesis.

The African had moved to the countryside north of Milan, near Lake Como – with his mother Monica, his son Adeodatus, and a small group of friends – to prepare himself for baptism. At age 32, Augustine was baptized by Ambrose on April 24, 387, during the Easter vigil, at the Cathedral of Mulan.

After his baptism, Augustine decided to return to Africa with his friends, with the idea of living a monastic communal life in the service of God.

But at Ostia [port of Rome], while waiting to sail for Africa, his mother suddenly took ill and died shortly afterwards, breaking her son’s heart.

Back in his homeland, the convert settled down in Hippo to set up a monastery as planned. But in this North African coastal city, despite his resistances, he was ordained a priest in 391 and then started with some friends the monastic life he had been thinking about, dividing his time between prayer, study and preaching.

All he wanted was to serve the truth, he did not feel a calling to pastoral work, but later he understood that his calling from God was to be a shepherd of others, and thus to offer the gift of truth to others.

In Hippo, four years later, in 395, he was consecrated Bishop. Continuing to deepen his study of Scriptures and of the traditional Cristian texts, Augustine was an exemplary bishop in his tireless pastoral commitment.

He preached several times a week to the faithful, helped orphans and poor people, attended to the formation of the clergy and to organizing female and male monasteries.

In short, the former rhetoretician affirmed himself as one of the most important Christian leaders of his time. Very active in the governance of his diocese – with remarkable civilian consequences even – during more than 35 years in the episcopate, the Bishop of Hippo, in fact, exercised a vast influence in the leadership of the Church in Roman Africa, and more generally, in the Christianity of his time, confronting religious tendencies and tenacious, disintegrative heresies like Manichaeism, Donatism and Pelagianism, which threatened Christian faith in the one God rich with mercy.

And Augustine entrusted himself to God every day, to the very end of his life. Seized with a fever, while Hippo was besieged for almost three months by barbarian invaders, the Bishop – we are told by his friend and biogrpaher Possidius in Vita Augustini – asked to have the penitential psalms written in large letters and “had the pages posted on the walls of his room so that he could read them from his sickbed, crying uninterruptedly” (31,2).

Thus passed the last days in the life of Augustine, who died on August 28, 430, before he turned 76. Our next meetings will be dedicated to his works, his message and his interior development.

Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, Prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Cause of Saints, has announced that the beatification of the great British patristics scholar John Henry Newman is “imminent.” (Hat tip: Gashwin Gomes.)

News flash from Teresa Benedetta: “Pope Benedict XVI today gave the first in what he announced to be a series of catecheses on St. Augustine.” She’ll have a translation later today.

When I first published my short essay Roman Cruelty, Christian Purity, people asked me if Roman culture was really all that smutty. Or was I maybe exaggerating just a little?

If anything, I understated the evidence, because it’s best not to go there. But you can see plenty of examples of ancient preoccupations by visiting the websites of antiquities dealers, who do a brisk trade in “erotic-themed” lamps and amulets. And there is no shortage of academic studies of the matter.

Now comes historian Jacqui Murray to vindicate my claim. In an essay titled Ancient Lives Uncensored, published in in the Brisbane (Australia) Courier-Mail, she says pretty much what I said: “For centuries the public’s view of Roman life has been sanitised by royal rulers, governments, archaeologists and some historians.” Though Dr. Murray is more sanguine (or at least neutral) on the proclivities of the ancients, her claims echo my own.

ANYONE looking for lessons in the history of censorship and propaganda need look no further than Pompeii.

For the past 200 years the real story of this ancient town, destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79, has been kept from public view.
Our image of Roman life has been censored, sanitised and sanctified.

For anyone raised on the white marble and white toga version of Rome, the latest offerings on Roman life will come as a shock.

The idealised world passed on to us by the great writers of classical Latin was largely restricted to the very small minority that represented Rome’s scholarly elite.

Forget all those stories about Caligula and his horse, Nero, in Capri’s Blue Grotto and the goings-on by other degenerate members of Roman imperial families.

The reality was that plenty of ordinary Roman folk were up to, or at least had no inhibitions about, what gave rise to the term “pornography”.

These misunderstandings have arisen because many of Pompeii’s artefacts have been spirited, or locked, away for centuries.

I’ll spare you the detail, but it’s there.

Several years back, the city of Florence, Italy, hosted a conference on The City and the Book. The papers are now online, including two of special interest to readers of the Fathers: “Jerome and His Learned Lady Disciples,” by Claudio Moreschini of the University of Pisa, and “Cassiodorus,” by Dr. Luciana Cuppo Csaki of the Societas internationalis pro Vivario.

Danny Garland’s made another splash, this time with an essay titled The Church Fathers’ Marian Interpretation of the Old Testament. It’s worth your time.

While you’re on the subject, check the progress on Suburban Banshee’s gradual transcription of Thomas Livius’s great work The Blessed Virgin in the Fathers of the First Six Centuries. (Said Banshee has also returned to her translation of Prudentius. Gaudete et laetare.)

There’s much good work appearing on the Fathers’ Marian doctrine. The best place to begin is Luigi Gambero’s Mary and the Fathers of the Church: The Blessed Virgin Mary in Patristic Thought. An interesting second stop is Stephen J. Shoemaker’s The Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition and Assumption, which analyzes documentary and archeological material — and provides abundant documentation.

For the Love of Literature is a book about reading by my dear friend and homeschooling guru Maureen Wittmann. It’s a book for book-lovers, full of lists that provide pathways for curiosity through many fields of study, many lands, many periods of history. I love the fact that it includes the generally accepted Great Books, but also the fiercely loved Cool Books — dime novels, potboilers, and such. I’m grateful for the fact that such a lovely volume begins with a foreword by Yours Truly. In it I talk about my grandfather, my father, myself, and how the love of books passed through our generations.

And, yes, the book includes reading lists on early Christianity. And, yes, they include both Great Books and Cool Books — not to mention my books!

New papa Danny Garland (see baby photos) gives serious and extended consideration to a very important topic: The Necessity of the Study of the Fathers of the Church for Priests in light of the Second Vatican Council’s Optatam Totius. Danny’s paper examines

article 16 of Vatican II’s Decree on the Training of Priests in which it states that “students should be shown what the Fathers of the Church, both of the East and West, have contributed towards the faithful transmission and elucidation of each of the revealed truths.” I will show how the Church Fathers are exemplars of the formation that this document sets out for priests by virtue of the holiness of their lives, their loyalty to the Church, their immersion in Scripture, and the way they did theology.

Read it all.

Carl Sommer, author of We Look for a Kingdom: The Everyday Lives of the Early Christians, emailed me a few more bits on the dating of Christmas.

You’ll find a couple of interesting articles relating to the December 25 dating of Christmas here and here. I should probably make my interest in this subject clear. I do not believe it is possible to establish the precise date of Jesus’ birth; and, in
many ways, the exact date is probably unimportant. I am, however, interested in refuting the notion that Christmas is some kind of a “pagan” holiday. December 25 was chosen by Christians for Christian reasons, not as a concession to pagan culture. I have no doubt that by the middle of the fourth century December 25 received a new prominence because of the need to counter Sol Invictus, but Christian usage of December 25 clearly predates that time.

Carl’s right. It’s very clear — from Hippolytus, Julius Africanus, and Clement of Alexandria — that some Christians celebrated December 25 from very early times. Nevertheless, it seems there was a strong push at the end of the fourth century to establish the holiday universally and promote its celebration. It’s possible that this push was the Church’s way of addressing a lingering attachment to Sol Invictus. That’s perfectly compatible, of course, with Carl’s contention that Christmas predates Sol Invictus. Carl responded that he and I are in perfect agreement.

Today’s the memorial of Saints Basil and Gregory, the great Cappadocian Fathers. I’ve posted audio here, other links here. Pope Benedict has dedicated four audience talks to these two men, beginning with this one. Pope John Paul II wrote an apostolic letter, Patres Ecclesiae, on St. Basil alone — but it hasn’t been translated into English yet. Any takers?

UPDATE: Jeff Ziegler gives us these links:
— St. Basil (d. 379), traditionally reckoned among the four greatest Eastern Fathers.
— St. Gregory Nazianzen (d. 389 or 390).
— Links to their works.
— Pope Benedict devoted four of his 2007 general audiences to SS. Basil and Gregory (see July and August).
— Cardinal Newman on SS. Basil and Gregory (from his The Church of the Fathers, written in 1833, during his Anglican period).

Today is the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, a feast that enshrines the doctrine of the Council of Ephesus. (For a bit of the dramatic story of that council, see my posts here and here.) Catholic Encyclopedia tells us…

Mary’s Divine motherhood is based on the teaching of the Gospels, on the writings of the Fathers, and on the express definition of the Church. St. Matthew (1:25) testifies that Mary “brought forth her first-born son” and that He was called Jesus. According to St. John (1:15) Jesus is the Word made flesh, the Word Who assumed human nature in the womb of Mary. As Mary was truly the mother of Jesus, and as Jesus was truly God from the first moment of His conception, Mary is truly the mother of God. Even the earliest Fathers did not hesitate to draw this conclusion as may be seen in the writings of St. Ignatius [Ephes 7], St. Irenaeus [Adv Haer 3.19], and Tertullian [Adv Prax 27]. The contention of Nestorius denying to Mary the title “Mother of God” [Serm 1.6.7] was followed by the teaching of the Council of Ephesus proclaiming Mary to be Theotokos in the true sense of the word. [Cf. Ambr., in Luc. II, 25, P.L., XV, 1521; St. Cyril of Alex., Apol. pro XII cap.; c. Julian., VIII; ep. ad Acac., 14; P.G., LXXVI, 320, 901; LXXVII, 97; John of Antioch, ep. ad Nestor., 4, P.G., LXXVII, 1456; Theodoret, haer. fab., IV, 2, P.G., LXXXIII, 436; St. Gregory Nazianzen, ep. ad Cledon., I, P.G., XXXVII, 177; Proclus, hom. de Matre Dei, P.G., LXV, 680; etc.]

My essay on St. John Chrysostom’s “mystagogy of marriage” is the lead article in this month’s Touchstone magazine. The issue also includes my review of Rod Whitacre’s Patristic Greek Reader. Why don’t you subscribe?