The Concepts of Justice and Piety in the Byzantine Political and Philosophical Thought of the 4th Century

Introduction. The article analyzes the transformations of the concept of justice in early Byzantine thought. The purpose of the article is to test the hypothesis that the semantic shifts in the meaning of the concept of justice in the philosophical and theological literature were due to political processes and events. Methods. The article analyzes the political philosophical and political theological texts of the fourth century: “Oration in Honor of Constantine on the Thirtieth Anniversary of His Reign” by Eusebius of Caesarea; “Panegyric in Honour of Constantius” and “The Heroic Deeds of Constantius” by emperor Julian (“The Apostate”); “On Kingship” by Synesius of Cyrene. In the course of the analysis, the methodological tools of the history of concepts were used. Analysis. The analysis revealed a conflict between the concepts of “justice” and “piety”. It was found that the analyzed texts violate the ancient political and philosophical correlation of these concepts in which piety is considered as a form of justice. In the texts of Eusebius of Caesarea, piety is presented as a particular virtue without any connection with justice. Moreover, the frequency of using the concept of “piety” in the sense of the ruler’s virtue significantly exceeds the frequency of using the concept of “justice” in the sense of political virtue. In the texts of the Emperor Justinian, the discursive status of “justice” is restored. However, in the political philosophy of Synesius of Cyrene, the correlation of the concepts of “justice” and “piety” prescribed by Eusebius of Caesarea is fixed. Results. These processes is due to the influence of religious discourse on political one which is quite understandable in the works of theologians, on the one hand, and the crisis of polis and republican political technologies and discourses in the situation of increasing complexity of administrative tasks faced by the Roman emperors of the 4th century, on the other hand which subsequently led to the formation of a specific Byzantine “taxis” – a socio-cultural order. In this regard, the texts of Emperor Julian can be considered as an unsuccessful attempt to restore the previous discourse, an attempt to restore justice to a dominant place among the virtues of the ruler. The failure of this attempt is attested from the texts of Synesius of Cyrene. All the above allows us to conclude that a new Christian-imperial political discourse is being generated in the corpus of philosophical and theological texts in which the concept of justice is given a relatively modest place.

LITERARY AND THEOLOGICAL BACKGROUND OF THE SERMON ON LAW AND GRACE

This article studies the literary and theological background of the Sermon on Law and Grace, a famous oration by Ilarion, the (future) Metropolitan of Kyiv, from the mid-eleventh century. The author of this article focuses also on potential patristic models for Ilarion’s theological and patriotic reflection on the recent East Slavic history in the light of the official adoption of Christianity under Volodymyr Sviatoslavich, Prince of Kyiv. The main feature of the mentioned (self-)reflection, relying on the notion of history as the history of salvation, is disregarding the Byzantine political and cultural superiority and, simultaneously, emphasizing the justice of God, who brings his grace equally to all peoples, thus positioning them on the same spiritual level. This kind of reasoning was not a peculiarity of the Rus’ culture but formed a wider phenomenon defined by apologetic attitu­de and was characteristic of the entire religious-literary tradition of the East Orthodox Slavs between the tenth and sixteenth centuries. While trying to construct a theological justification of the historical value of Kyivan Rus’, Ilarion adapted patristic patterns coming from Byzantium, for example, the explanation of (dis)continuity between the Law of Moses and Christ’s mercy, particularly following Gregory Nazianzen and Patriarch Nicephorus I, or perception of a polity led by a Christian ruler, particularly following Eusebius of Caesarea. Keywords: Sermon on Law and Grace, Ilarion, Rus’ literature, history of salvation, patristic models

The Name ‘Palestine’ in Classical Greek Texts

This article provides a contextualised exposition of classical Greek texts, in chronological order, from Herodotus to Eusebius of Caesarea (5th century BC-4th century AD), with brief biographical reviews and in which the name ‘Palestine’ appears. A Latin text by Pomponius Mela is also included for its reference to Gaza which, with the exception of the Septuagint texts, predates Arrian, Arrian of Nicomedia, a Greek historian of the Roman period, by nearly a century. The selection of classical texts explored in this article is not intended to be exhaustive; however, the exploration of these texts in connection with Palestine has never been attempted before. While avoiding historical, philosophical or literary criticism of these texts, this article focuses on the specific considerations of the name ‘Palestine’ in the classical literature.

Den mångtydiga ortodoxin

The history of Christianity is marked by frequent debates over doctrinal truth. From an early stage, Christian authors began to use the terms "or­thodoxy" and "heresy" to deal with diversity of faith. While the orthodox faith was seen as the one that had been preserved from the time of the apostles, heresies were seen as later innovations. This idea was expressed in the Ecclesiastical History by Eusebius of Caesarea in the fourth century, and became influential in later Christian history writing. Up until the twentieth century, orthodoxy and heresy were concepts typically associated with doctrinal content. However, with Walter Bauer's immensely influential work Rechtgläubligkeit und Ketzerei im Frühesten Christentum (1934), a socio-historical understanding of orthodoxy and heresy came to be adopted. According to this view, the concepts corresponded to social realities. With the influence from poststructuralist thought from the 1980s onwards, further developments took place in this scholarly area, with a new understanding of the concepts as rhetorical representations. This article argues that even in modern research, orthodoxy and heresy are typically associated with value judgment, and that ancient Christian cat­egorizations of "orthodox" and "heretic", and of the heretics them­selves, have continued to determine the way in which we read the sources today. Giving an example of heresiology produced by Jerome of Stridon during the Origenist controversy, it is suggested that in order to avoid essential­izing the rhetorical constructions of the heresiologists, a greater attention to their strategies as well as to their context is needed.

Eusebius of Caesarea, the Roman Empire, and the Fulfillment of Biblical Prophecy: Reassessing Byzantine Imperial Eschatology in the Age of Constantine

Modern scholarship often attributes to Eusebius of Caesarea (d. circa 340 AD) the view that God's heavenly kingdom had become manifest in the Roman Empire of Constantine the Great. Consequently, Eusebius is deemed significant in the development of Christian eschatological thought as the supposed formulator of a new “realized eschatology” for the Christian Roman Empire. Similarly, he is considered the originator of so-called “Byzantine imperial eschatology”—that is, eschatology designed to justify the existing imperial order under the emperors in Constantinople. Scholars advancing these claims most frequently cite a line from Eusebius's Tricennial Oration in which he identified the accession of the sons of Constantine with the prophesied kingdom of the saints in the Book of Daniel. Further supposed evidence has been adduced in his other writings, especially his Life of Constantine. This article argues that this common interpretation of Eusebius's eschatology is mistaken and has resulted from treating a few passages in isolation while overlooking their rhetorical context. It demonstrates instead that Eusebius adhered to a conventional Christian eschatology centered on the future kingdom of heaven that would accompany the second coming of Christ and further suggests that the concept of “Byzantine imperial eschatology” should be reconsidered.

Las listas episcopales en Eusebio de Cesarea: entre teología e historia

The status quaestionis on the Episcopal Lists of Eusebius of Caesarea has different positions. The complete Episcopal Lists offer specific information which, compared with current systematic studies, show that the historical strictness of the Father of Christian Historiography is directly related with his Theological intention and not disassociated as has been argued. The research contributes with the inclusion of the Church of Caesarea as an example of the Episcopal Lists, along with the Churches of Rome, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria.

The Missionary Activity of St. Peter Outside Palestine in the Light of the New Testament Literature

From the historical works of Eusebius of Caesarea we learn that St. Peter went to Rome in 42 and preached the Gospel there for 25 years. However, this information is not confirmed in the books of the New Testament. For this reason, this article attempts to answer the question of where St. Peter could have stayed and acted from the moment he left Jerusalem (Acts 12:17) until his arrival in Rome. The analysis of Gal 2:11–14 leads to the conclusion that after the Council of Jerusalem he certainly stayed in Antioch for some time. It is possible that during his long journey he reached the northern regions of Asia Minor, as a reminiscence of this can be found in 1 Peter 1:1. Then, on his way to Rome, he probably paid a visit to Christians in Corinth, as evidenced by 1 Cor 1:12; 9:5. These texts therefore allow us to suppose that after leaving Jerusalem, St. Peter became an itinerant apostle, carried out extensive missionary activities and, thanks to his personal contacts with Christian communities, gained great authority among them.