Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church
Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church
GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE TEXTS According to Anna Comnena, the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I (Emperor: 1081–1118), founder of the Comnene dynasty, her mother, Irene, was fond of reading the works of St Maximus, ‘the philosopher and martyr’ (especially at mealtimes!). Anna found this strange, for, she said, ‘the man’s writing, so highly speculative and intellectual, makes the reader’s head swim’. Challenged by her daughter, Irene replied, ‘I myself do not approach such books without a tremble. Yet I cannot tear myself away from them. Wait a little and after a close look at other books, believe me, you will taste the sweetness of these’ (Sewter 1969, 178–9). Maximus is, without any doubt, a difficult writer, at any rate when he begins to explain matters at length. His Centuries may be fairly straightforward, but once he allows himself to develop his ideas, his sentences become long and involved, and he seems positively shy of full-stops! Even the immensely learned Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople in the ninth century, found him ‘unclear and difficult to interpret’ (Henry 1962, 80). It is perhaps this that has deterred translators. But, as the Empress Irene said, in these works one will come to ‘taste their sweetness’: I hope there are not too many asperities in my English to disguise still further that sweetness. The translated texts that follow more or less cover the whole of St Maximus the Confessor’s writing career. The first is one of his early letters written from the monastery of St George in Cyzicus shortly before 626, and the last two are short works that belong to the period in the early 640s, when Maximus had come out against Monothelitism, before his departure for Rome in 646. Most of these translated texts are drawn from his Ambigua, his discussion of difficulties in the writings of St Gregory the Theologian (and one from the works of Denys the Areopagite). These Ambigua exist in two distinct collections, one addressed to John, Bishop of Cyzicus, and the other to a certain Abbot Thomas, described as Maximus’ ‘spiritual father and teacher’ (the two
78 TEXTS collections are consequently often called the Ambigua ad Joannem and the Ambigua ad Thomam). The Ambigua ad Joannem are the earlier, to be dated to the very beginning of Maximus’ African stay, that is 628–30; the Ambigua ad Thomam belong to 634 or shortly after, as it is clear from them that the Monenergist controversy has broken. As printed in Migne’s Patrologia Graeca (following the Greek manuscripts consulted for Oehler’s edition), these two collections are printed together, the later placed—confusingly—before the earlier (in their joint enumeration the prefatory epistles to the dedicatees are not counted). This arrangement of the two collections appears to go back to Maximus himself, as in the first of the opuscula (645–6), he retracts an unfortunate monenergist phrase from what he calls ‘the seventh chapter of the Difficulties in the great Gregory’ (Opusc. 1:33A: this is the reading of all the Greek manuscripts). 1 The two collections must, however, have circulated separately, since the manuscript from which Eriugena translated the Ambigua in the ninth century contained only the earlier collection (which he enumerated counting the prefatory epistle as the first). It is, in fact, evident that the works of Maximus the Confessor were soon preserved as the works of one of the great Fathers of Orthodoxy (in Africa and Palestine, at least, if not for several centuries in Constantinople itself). Several of the letters and treatises have scholia appended to them (which are printed in the Migne text), which summarize the main points of the work: as these are unlikely to go back to Maximus, I have omitted them from my translation. The Ambigua, or Books of Difficulties, are perhaps the most important source for Maximus’ theological thinking. He was very fond of presenting his thought as a collection of propositions, especially in his Centuries, but in his Difficulties we can follow the route of his thinking. This is also true of the other works that have been translated here: his remarkable treatise of love (Ep. 2) and the two brief Christological treatises. Each treatise has its own introduction, and also notes to elucidate the argument and the sources Maximus used. Like all the Fathers, the most important source for Maximus is the Bible: as well as quoting from the Bible, he very frequently alludes to it, and his allusions are often valuable in indicating the direction of his thought. For the Old Testament, the text of the Bible with which Maximus was familiar was the ancient Greek translation, the Septuagint (the ‘Seventy’ (LXX), so called after the seventy elders who were thought to have made the translation in Ptolemaic Egypt in the third century BC). References to the books of the Old Testament are therefore to the Septuagint (of which there is, alas, no up-to-date English translation). Where this differs in a major way from the Hebrew Bible (the basis of
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GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE<br />
TEXTS<br />
According to Anna Comnena, the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor<br />
Alexius I (Emperor: 1081–1118), founder of the Comnene dynasty, her<br />
mother, Irene, was fond of reading the works of St Maximus, ‘the<br />
philosopher and martyr’ (especially at mealtimes!). Anna found this<br />
strange, for, she said, ‘the man’s writing, so highly speculative and<br />
intellectual, makes the reader’s head swim’. Challenged by her<br />
daughter, Irene replied, ‘I myself do not approach such books without<br />
a tremble. Yet I cannot tear myself away from them. Wait a little and<br />
after a close look at other books, believe me, you will taste the<br />
sweetness of these’ (Sewter 1969, 178–9). Maximus is, without any<br />
doubt, a difficult writer, at any rate when he begins to explain<br />
matters at length. His Centuries may be fairly straightforward, but<br />
once he allows himself to develop his ideas, his sentences become long<br />
and involved, and he seems positively shy of full-stops! Even the<br />
immensely learned Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople in the ninth<br />
century, found him ‘unclear and difficult to interpret’ (Henry 1962,<br />
80). It is perhaps this that has deterred translators. But, as the<br />
Empress Irene said, in these works one will come to ‘taste their<br />
sweetness’: I hope there are not too many asperities in my English to<br />
disguise still further that sweetness.<br />
The translated texts that follow more or less cover the whole of St<br />
Maximus the Confessor’s writing career. The first is one of his early<br />
letters written from the monastery of St George in Cyzicus shortly<br />
before 626, and the last two are short works that belong to the period<br />
in the early 640s, when Maximus had come out against Monothelitism,<br />
before his departure for Rome in 646. Most of these translated texts<br />
are drawn from his Ambigua, his discussion of difficulties in the<br />
writings of St Gregory the Theologian (and one from the works of<br />
Denys the Areopagite).<br />
These Ambigua exist in two distinct collections, one addressed to<br />
John, Bishop of Cyzicus, and the other to a certain Abbot Thomas,<br />
described as Maximus’ ‘spiritual father and teacher’ (the two
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