Mary in Patristics

Author(s):  
Andrew Louth

Mariological reflection in some second-century Fathers is introduced, especially the parallel with Eve; this explicit reflection on Mary is set beside second-century reflection on the Church as Virgin Mother, a tradition only later explicitly related to Mary as Virgin Mother. Attention is paid to the second-century Protevangelium of James with its remarkably developed Mariology; the nature of its esotericism is discussed, and later apocryphal texts introduced. Other tantalizing hints of devotion to Mary are mentioned, not least the use of the title Theotokos in a prayer belonging, possibly, to the third century. Mary’s virginity as an ascetic model in the fourth-century ascetic movement is briefly discussed. The first elaborate celebration of Mary is found in the liturgical poetry of the fourth-century Ephrem the Syrian. Mariology developed dramatically from the fifth century, witnessed in Proklos’ homilies, Romanos’ Kontakia, and the Akathist Hymn.

1970 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 277-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. L. West

In the controversy over the date of Corinna, the following points may be taken as agreed:1. An edition was made in Boeotia about the end of the third or beginning of the second century B.C.2. The texts of Corinna current in the late Hellenistic and Roman periods were all descended from that Boeotian edition.3. Before its dissemination, Corinna was unknown in Greece at large. If she wrote at an earlier period, she must have been remembered only locally.The difference between Boeotian spelling of the fifth century and that of the fourth is very great: but the difference in this respect between the mid-fourth century and the late third or early second is comparatively slight. It is therefore tenable that whereas there would be a good reason for the re-spelling of fifth-century Boeotian into the later convention of any period, there would be no obvious or adequate reason for re-spelling Boeotian of the fourth century into the orthography of the third, or that of the third into that of the second. Even those features of fourth-century spelling which have ceased to preponderate are by no means unknown or even uncommon at the end of the third century.


Vox Patrum ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. 353-373
Author(s):  
Andrzej Hołasek

At the beginning of the fourth century the legal situation of Christians in the Roman Empire changed dramatically. Thanks to the Emperor Constantine they were no longer persecuted, and their faith became religio licita. From that point onwards the views of Christians on the state began to evolve. It was a long-term process, and happened at a varied pace. One of the aspects of this transformation was the change of Christian attitude to military service. It needs to be said that, from this perspective, the Church legislative sources have not been examined in a great detail. This article aims to take a closer look at several of the sources that include Church regulations relating to military service of the fourth and fifth cen­turies. These include, i.a., Canons of Hippolytus; Letters of St. Basil; Apostolic Constitutions and Canons of the Apostles. In addition, the article discusses the rel­evant contents of synodal and council canons from said period. These regulations show the adaptation of Church legislature to the new circumstances, in which the Roman state stopped being the persecutor and became the protector of Christianity. The analysis of numerous documents confirms that Christians were present in the Roman army already in the third century. Because of the spilling of blood and the pagan rites performed in the army, the Church hierarchs strongly resisted the idea of allowing Christians to serve in the military. Church regulations from the third century strictly forbade enlisting in the army, or continuing military service for those who were newly accepted into the community, for the reasons mentioned above. From other documents, however, we learn that the number of Christians in the army was nonetheless increasing. Many were able to reconcile military service with their conscience. At the beginning of the fourth century emperor Constantine granted Christians religious freedom. He allowed Christian soldiers to abstain from invoking pagan gods while swearing military oath (sacramentum), and to participate in Sunday services. The empire was slowly becoming a Christian state. It is for this reason that in the Church regulations from the fourth and fifth century we find accep­tance for the presence of Christians in the army. Even though killing of an enemy required undertaking penance, it was no longer a reason for excommunication with no possibility of returning to the Christian communion. The Church expected Christian soldiers to be satisfied with their wages alone, and to avoid harming oth­ers through stealing, forced lodging or taking food. The Church in the East no lon­ger considered it wrong to accept gifts for the upkeep of clergy and other faithful from the soldiers who behaved in a correct manner. From the mid-fourth century performing religious services started being treated as separate from performing a layperson’s duties. For this reason the bishops, in both parts of the empire, de­cided that clergy are barred from military service. In the West, those of the faithful who enlisted with the army after being baptised could no longer be consecrated in the future. In the East, the approach was less rigorous, as the case of Nectarius, the Archbishop of Constantinople, shows. By the end of the fourth century, the West adopted very strict rules of public penance for soldiers – the Popes reminded in their letters to the bishops in Spain and Gaul that after performing the public pen­ance, the soldiers were forbidden to return to the army. We should not forget that the change in the attitude of the Church to military service was also affected by the political-military situation of the Empire. During the fourth and fifth centuries its borderlands were persistently harassed by barbar­ian raids, and the Persian border was threatened. Let us also remember that the army was not popular in the Roman society during this period. For these reasons, the shifting position of the Church had to be positively seen by the Empire’s ruling elites. The situation became dramatic at the beginning of the fifth century, when Rome was sacked by barbarians. Developing events caused the clergy to deepen their reflections on the necessity of waging war and killing enemies. Among such clergymen was St. Augustine, in whose writings we may find a justification of the so-called just war. Meanwhile, in the East, the view that wars can be won only with God’s help began to dominate.


1976 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Cunliffe

SummaryThe results of five seasons of excavation (1971–5) are summarized. A continuous strip 30–40 m. wide extending across the centre of the fort from one side to the other was completely excavated revealing pits, gullies, circular stake-built houses, rectangular buildings, and 2-, 4-, and 6-post structures, belonging to the period from the sixth to the end of the second century B.C. The types of structures are discussed. A sequence of development, based largely upon the stratification preserved behind the ramparts, is presented: in the sixth–fifth century the hill was occupied by small four-post ‘granaries’ possibly enclosed by a palisade. The first hill-fort rampart was built in the fifth century protecting houses, an area of storage pits, and a zone of 4-and 6-post buildings laid out in rows along streets. The rampart was heightened in the third century, after which pits continued to be dug and rows of circular houses were built. About 100 B.C. rectangular buildings, possibly of a religious nature, were erected, after which the site was virtually abandoned. Social and economic matters are considered. The excavation will continue.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Detty Manongko

The research of exploring the Church History have not been many studies done in Indonesia. Though this field is related to the theology, especially the development of Christian Theology for centuries. One area of Church History that needs to be examined are the Christian Thought of the Church Fathers from first to third centuries. The field is often called “Patrology” which is the study of Church Fathers from first to third centuries. Who are they, what are the results of their work, why they have produced such theological thoughts, and what they thoughts are still influencing to the contemporary theologians in Indonesia?The main problem in this research is how does the perception of contemporary theologians in Indonesia to the Chruch Father’ s theological thoughts? Through a literature review of Soteriology, Christology, and Eschatology, then this research has yielded important principles concerning to the Church Fathers’s theological thoughts at the Early Church period. And then through the field research has proven that the majority of contemporary theologians in Indonesia have a positive perception to the Church Fathers’s theological thought from first to the third centuries. Therefore, the reasons of why this research is conducted and how it is done are described in the first chapter of these book. The second chapter of this writing contains a literature review of the theological thoughts of the church fathers from the first century to the third. There are four groups of Church Fathers from the first century to the third. There are four groups of Church Fathers that are described in this chapter, i.e., The Apostolic Fathers (from the first to the middle of second century), The Aplogists (second century), The Anti-Gnostic Fathers (second and third century), and The Alexandrian Fathers (third century). The third chapter discusses the quantitative methods used in this research including statistical models to prove the validity and reliability of the data acquisition method that is used in the field of this research. It desperately needs accuracy and diligence in order to display a quality and useful research reports for the development of Church History studies. Discussion of the results of this study, along with the evidence that reinforces the result of this research is presented in the fourth chapter. Finally, the fifth chapter of this study elaborates the main thoughts that are generated in this study, which also expected to be important principles in conducting futher research.The results obtained in this study are not yet maximal on account of various constraints, such as limited time, facilities, funding, and so forth. However, the writer wishes that the results achieved in this study will give a valuable contribution to all readers of this writing and that it will be a motivation for a further research in the field of Church History in the future.


1975 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank D. Gilliard

At the end of the nineteenth century Louis Duchesne's Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule decisively undermined the foundation for maintaining the apostolicity of Gallic sees. This epochal study proved that, of the twenty-five lists of Gallic bishops which were credible and could be verified, only that of the church at Lyon reached back as far as the second century, and only four others as far as the third century. Thus it effectively discredited the pious medieval myths which had been created to prove that the Gallic episcopal traditions derived from the apostles, and led Duchesne confidently to conclude that, except for the “mother-church” at Lyon, established probably in the middle of the second century, no other church was founded in the Gallic provinces of Belgica, Lugdunensis, Aquitania, and Germania much before A.D. 230.


2017 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 247-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Corke-Webster

In 1967 Alan Cameron published a landmark article in this journal, ‘The fate of Pliny'sLettersin the late Empire’. Opposing the traditional thesis that the letters of Pliny the Younger were only rediscovered in the mid to late fifth century by Sidonius Apollinaris, Cameron proposed that closer attention be paid to the faint but clear traces of the letters in the third and fourth centuries. On the basis of well-observed intertextual correspondences, Cameron proposed that Pliny's letters were being read by the end of the fourth century at the latest. That article now seems the vanguard of a rise in scholarly interest in Pliny's late-antique reception. But Cameron also noted the explicit attention given to the letters by two earlier commentators—Tertullian of Carthage, in the late second to early third century, and Eusebius of Caesarea, in the early fourth. The use of Pliny in these two earliest commentators, in stark contrast to their later successors, has received almost no subsequent attention.


2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 330-346
Author(s):  
Ashish Kumar

This article analyses the formation of state polities in central India, where according to Ashokan edicts, āṭavī tribes had been present in the third century bce. From several of these tribes, āṭavīka-rājās (forest kings) arose by the fourth century ce and the Gupta monarch Samudragupta reduced them to the position of servants. This article argues that the two ruling houses—the Parivrājaka and the Uchchakalpa—rose to power in the second half of the fifth century ce in eastern Madhya Pradesh from āṭavīka background and erected their state apparatus similar to that of their overlord Gupta rulers. In the epigraphs of the Parivrājaka rulers, Ḍāhala region, comprising much of eastern Madhya Pradesh with Tripur ī (near Jabalpur) as its centre, is mentioned as a part of their rājya. The Parivrājaka and the Uchchakalpa rājyas had common boundaries and the epigraphs indicate the presence of some territorial conflict between these two. The article proposes that both of these ruling houses, having being subordinated to the Guptas, made land grants to brahmanas and temples for the integration of their territories. The shrines of a local tribal goddess Piṣṭapurikādēvī received land grants from both the Parivrājaka and the Uchchakalpa rulers, and this paper argues that under the patronage of these same rulers, this goddess was absorbed into brahmanical pantheons as Lakṣmī—the consort of god Viṣṇu, due to the efforts of a non-brahmana individual, Chhōḍugōmika. The state formation, accompanied by cult assimilation in central India, therefore had been a complex and multilayered process.


2021 ◽  
pp. 55-68
Author(s):  
Phillip Sidney Horky

AbstractThis essay tracks a brief history of the concept of ‘co-breathing’ or ‘conspiration’ (συμπνοία), from its initial conception in Stoic cosmology in the third century BCE to its appropriation in Christian thought at the end of the second century CE. This study focuses on two related strands: first, how the term gets associated anachronistically with two paradigmatic philosopher-physicians, Hippocrates and Pythagoras, by intellectuals in the Early Roman Empire; and second, how the same term provides the early Church Fathers with a means to synthesize and explain discrete notions of ‘breath’ (πνεῦμα) through a repurposing of the pagan concept. Sources discussed include figures associated with Stoic, Pythagorean, and early Christian cosmologies.


Paracomedy ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 248-264
Author(s):  
Craig Jendza

This chapter explores three cases where authors engage with paracomedy after the fifth century BCE. It proposes that the anonymous fourth-century BCE tragedy Rhesus employs paracomedy and that it does so either because the author was indiscriminately copying from fifth-century drama or because he wanted to imitate Euripides’s penchant for paracomedy. It investigates the highly fragmentary evidence for Rhinthon’s third-century BCE hilarotragedies, normally thought to be theatrical farces, and posits that Rhinthon was utilizing a more explicit type of paracomedy than in the fifth century. It also provides an explanation for the surprising assertion from the second-century CE scholar Pollux that Euripides and Sophocles frequently employed a comic parabasis. The chapter argues that these cases of reception highlight paracomedy’s importance in antiquity and indicate that paracomedy was a noted hallmark of Euripidean stagecraft that had an indelible effect on the genre of tragedy.


Author(s):  
Edison R. L. Tinambunan

Abstrak: Filsafat telah memiliki perjalanan panjang dalam hubungannya dengan Kristianitas. Sumbangan filsafat untuk Kristianitas begitu banyak terutama dalam kaitannya dengan teologi. Tulisan ini meneliti soal integrasi filsafat dalam Kristianitas yang selama ini sering diperdebatkan. Periode apologi yang dimulai pada awal abad kedua sampai dengan pertengahan abad ketiga Masehi, memberikan suatu penjelasan konkrit untuk permasalahan ini. Melalui para apologet, yang sebelumnya adalah filsuf, bahkan mampu melangkah lebih jauh dalam penemuan kebijaksanaan yang sesungguhnya yang merupakan obyek dan tujuan filsafat. Bahkan mereka sampai pada suatu pemikiran bahwa filsafat adalah ranah semai yang mempersiapkan filsafat yang sesungguhnya, yaitu Kristianitas. Berkat para apologet, filsafat menjadi bagian penting dalam Kristianitas, bukan saja di bidang teologi, tetapi juga di dalam ranah eksegese, hermeneutika dan terlebih-lebih di dalam hidup. Penulis Kristiani setelah periode apologi mengintegrasikan filsafat dalam tulisan dan di dalam rumusan iman. Berbagai terminologi filosofis yang diintegrasikan ke Kristianitas belum tergantikan sampai dengan saat ini. Kata-kata Kunci: Filsafat, filsuf, teologi, apologi, apologet, kebijaksanaan. Abstract: Philosophy is having a long journey in its relationship with Christianity. There is much influence of philosophy on Christian thinking, but especially on theology. This article researches the integrity of philosophy within Christianity, an integral relationship which has always been debated. During the period of the Apologies, which was begun at the beginning of the second century up to the middle of the third century, an important concrete solution to this debate was given. Through the Apology Fathers of the Church who previously were philosophers, had the capacity to go farther in finding real wisdom, which is the subject and the goal of all research in philosophy. They were able to reach a consideration that their philosophy was a field seed which had prepared for the real philosophy, which is Christianity. Through the apologies, philosophy created an important partnership with Christianity in the areas of theology and biblical exegeses, and even in hermeneutics and way of life. After the period of the Apology Fathers, Christian writers integrated philosophy in a certain way into their writings, even as a formula of faith. And some philosophical terminology, which was integrated into Christianity, could not be replaced after this time. Keywords: Philosophy, philosopher, theology, apology, apolog, virtue.


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