Callimachus and the Bishops: Gregory of Nazianzus’s Second Oration

Abstract

Gregory’s second oration is a book-length treatise on the episcopal office that became a foundational text in the Byzantine tradition while also exercising an important influence, thanks to Rufinus’s translation, in the Latin West. In outlining the duties of the ideal bishop, Gregory invokes the New Testament image of the Good Shepherd, only to build on the text of John’s Gospel by invoking the prologue of Callimachus’s Aetia . He transforms the aesthetics of the latter into a guiding principle for the relationship between priest and congregation. The use of Callimachus to develop the metaphor from the New Testament text is characteristic of Gregory, who frequently adapts Callimachean language for his own literary, polemical, and theological ends. Finally, this paper demonstrates how Rufinus, working with an educated Latin audience in mind, turns to Virgil in order to render the literary texture of Gregory’s original, which draws heavily on the Alexandrian bucolic tradition.