Gregorii Nysseni De anima et resurrectione. Edited by ANDREAS SPIRA, post mortem editoris praefationem accurate composuit EKKEHARDUS MUHLENBERG.

Abstract

T his is the penultimate volume of the monumental enterprise of the comprehensive critical editio maior of Gregory of Nyssa’s works, based on a complete recensio of all existing manuscripts; it was initiated by Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff in 1908 and executed by a host of scholars through four generations under the initial direction of Werner Jaeger (†1961). The edition of Gregory’s treatise On the Soul and the Resurrection was originally entrusted to Hilde Polack. In 1982, Andreas Spira, who had edited Gregory’s Funeral Sermons in 1967 (GNO 9, pp. 343–490), took over the herculean task of studying and presenting the complicated history of the 72 manuscripts, and worked on them untiringly alongside his duties as a professor in classical studies at the University of Mainz until death took the pen from his hand in 2004. Nevertheless, Spira was able to complete the critical text, including the apparatus fontium et testimoniorum . He also left behind a handwritten apparatus of the textual variants, the conspectus codicum , bibliography, numerous notes on the manuscripts, and a reasoned draft of a stemma . After Spira’s demise Ekkehard Mühlenberg, professor emeritus at the University of Göttingen and seasoned editor of Gregory’s Oratio catechetica (GNO 3.4, 1996) and Epistula canonica (GNO 3.5, 2008), has succeeded in completing the grand task in exemplary fashion.