Bishop Of Antioch Research Articles

A pagan sophist and Christian bishops: correspondence between Libanius and Amphilochius, Bishop of Iconium, and Optimus, Bishop of Antioch in Pisidia. Translation and Comments

The 4th-6th centuries have deservedly been called the "golden age" of epistolography. For the people of this time, epistolary communication performed several important functions. Letters not only helped to maintain contacts with correspondents, but also contributed to building a complex system of social ties. This work presents a translation of two letters from Libanius addressed to his students, who later became bishops.

A Church and Its Charms

Meletios was exiled for 13 of his 20 years as bishop of Antioch, and at times as many as three other bishops claimed the Antiochene episcopacy during his tenure. Still, in an encomium for Meletios delivered in 386, his protegé John Chrysostom claimed that Meletios managed to enchant the whole city: “Blessed is that man, because he was strong enough to cast such a love charm (ϕίλτρον) on all of you.” John delivered this encomium in a large cruciform church that Meletios campaigned to build. In the church were burials: probably Babylas, a martyr bishop who had died in the Decian persecution about 150 years before, and Meletios himself, interred either in the same grave or a neighboring one. The next year, Dorys the presbyter would fund the pavement of the church’s floors, carpeting them in rich geometric designs and clean black-and-white dedicatory inscriptions. Using Sara Ahmed’s work on “the cultural politics of emotion,” this article analyzes the cruciform church through three different modes: its architecture, an encomium delivered there, and its mosaic program. The Meletian faction forged alliances with material and space to produce and manage affects of security, love, and pleasure in their communities. These spatial, discursive, and material enchantments encouraged the more decisive affiliation of fourth-century Antiochene Christians with Meletios’s community instead of with his competitors’ communities.

Incorruptible Bodies: Christology, Society, and Authority in Late Antiquity by Yonatan Moss

Reviewed by: Incorruptible Bodies: Christology, Society, and Authority in Late Antiquity by Yonatan Moss Ellen Muehlberger Yonatan Moss Incorruptible Bodies: Christology, Society, and Authority in Late Antiquity Christianity in Late Antiquity, 1 Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016 Pp. xiv + 244. $95.00. Though Incorruptible Bodies does not claim to be a biography, its central accomplishment is to offer about Severus of Antioch (and to a lesser extent, about his interlocutor Julian of Halicarnassus) the kind of insight one usually sees in biographical research. Traditionally, historians of sixth-century Christianity in the eastern Mediterranean depend on John of Ephesus’s portrait of Severus to make him the early visionary who inspired the organization of the anti-Chalcedonian movement. By working through his debates with Julian, Moss offers an updated interpretation of Severus’s aims: while separatist thought marked his early career, Severus as bishop of Antioch (512–18 ce) did not seek a division from the supporters of Chalcedon and was not inclined to create a new and different church. Moss proposes an intriguing method to organize his argument. Rejecting an approach that might focus solely on Severus’s political allegiances or his ecclesiology, Moss advocates that we survey multiple domains within Severus’s thought at the same time. He presents this method as something novel, explaining in the Introduction that his “stereoscopic approach” will grant otherwise unavailable insights about Severus (and again, to a lesser extent, Julian). Just as a topographer views similar photographs side by side to help the brain visualize a landscape in three dimensions, a historian might view similar discourses side by side to access a more vivid picture of the topic under study. Though the model of stereoscopy implies the use of two comparanda, Moss introduces four domains of thought to be considered together: the Christological conversation about incorruptibility that occupied Severus and Julian (Chapter One); the views these men had about the legitimacy of an imperial church (Chapter Two); their ideas about the efficacy of [End Page 660] the Eucharist (Chapter Three); and their debates about how to use the writings of earlier Christians as sources of authority (Chapter Four). Viewing these together is meant to draw what is common among them into higher relief. After all, stereoscopy is not a matter of viewing any two pictures side by side; it is, in topographic science, the practice of viewing side by side two pictures of the same exact landscape, which happen to have been taken at slightly different angles. Thus, by its explicit method the book proffers that there is something unified in all these domains, which just need to be viewed a certain way to reveal their unity. That unity, for Moss, resides in the concept of the body. Severus, focused on the post-resurrection body of Christ and its incorruptibility, imagined that body also to be the engine of the Eucharist’s work, and at the same time held to an ecclesiology that fought against any dissolution or division in the otherwise incorruptible “body” of the church. Julian’s views of Christ’s body diverged, and Moss shows that his ecclesiology and his theories of the Eucharist followed in train. But to say that ancient Christian theories of the body—whether Christ’s body, or a more generic human body—squared with a thinker’s ecclesiology or his approach to ritual life does not require a new model of analysis borrowed from elsewhere, like “stereoscopy.” Moss in his work is simply joining a tradition of interpretation in early Christian studies based on the same insight, some examples of which he acknowledges in the notes (Martin, Corinthian Body, 1995) while choosing not to cite, or perhaps not being cognizant of, others (Krawiec, Shenoute and the Women, 2001, and Schroeder, Monastic Bodies, 2007, are just two of many, many available options). To have drawn upon this tradition would have kept Moss from having to make a strange concession late in the book: the model that he introduces and argues for in other chapters he declares “irrelevant” for the investigation he chooses to conduct in Chapter Four (109). There, Moss observes that Severus’s and Julian’s respective treatments of Christ’s body and the...

Learning Christ: Ignatius of Antioch and the Mystery of Redemption by Gregory Vall

Reviewed by: Learning Christ: Ignatius of Antioch and the Mystery of Redemption by Gregory Vall David Vincent Meconi S.J. Learning Christ: Ignatius of Antioch and the Mystery of Redemption. By Gregory Vall. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2013. Pp. xii + 401. $69.95 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-8132-2158-8. In the first decade of the first Christian century, the bishop of Antioch found himself surrounded by imperial guards under order to drag him back to Rome to face the consequences of his supposed atheism and traitorous leadership in Christ’s Church. Eusebius’s episcopal list places Ignatius as the third bishop of Antioch, after Saints Peter and Evodius, reigning in Antioch from ca. 70 to 107. Ignatius was a larger-than-life character; even as a child he was supposedly the little boy whom the Lord embraced and held up as an example of heavenly simplicity (Matt 18:2-4). In ten clear and illuminating chapters, Gregory Vall brings the reader through the many legends and apocryphal assumptions surrounding Ignatius and his thinking. Vall’s purpose in writing this work is to show contemporary scholars the levels of richness and theological insight in Ignatius’s relatively small epistolary corpus. The first two chapters treat Ignatius’s use of Scripture and how his reading of the canon plays out in his theology of salvation. “Scripture and Economy” (chap. 1) and “Issues in Ignatian Scholarship” (chap. 2) show not only the massive amount of scholarly attention such a relatively small amount of writing has generated over the centuries, but also why the way Ignatius read and [End Page 321] used Sacred Scripture is still important today. The five guiding loci Vall would have the reader keep in mind are how Ignatius consistently assumes (1) the necessary connection between “theology” (God’s very self) and God’s economy in creation, (2) the link between creation and redemption, (3) the relationship between the Old and New Covenants of God and his chosen ones, (4) the sending of the Son who comes to impart the Spirit, and (5) the life of the pilgrim-sojourner who simultaneously is a future beholder of eternal glory. With these guiding principles in place, Ignatius proves to be a Christian thinker who understands that mystical transformation, and not moral achievement, is what saves us. Accordingly, here we become the students of one who sees himself teaching on behalf of Jesus Christ. This is ecclesia for Ignatius, a place where those called out of the world come together as one so as to be illumined into true Christ-bearers. For Ignatius, therefore, “theology is properly an ecclesial activity and not merely the function of isolated individuals. Our place, then, is to sit alongside Ignatius and contemplate the mystery of redemption with him” (86), thereby developing a visceral sympathy for the things of Christ, drawing near to God and to the people of God in truth and in love. Theology and all Christian activity are consummated in nothing other than Love himself, charity being the only true mark of the theologian. The next three chapters thus turn to Ignatius’s theology of the Godhead: “Jesus and the Father” (chap. 3), “Flesh and Spirit” (chap. 4), and “Faith and Love” (chap. 5). Here, the fundamental theology of Ignatius is handled masterfully. A true contrast to the starts and attempts and to the Gnostic leanings, as well as to the fundamental errors, of the second century, Ignatius amazingly proves to be a loving pastor as well as a sophisticated theologian anticipating accurately later Church formulae. Vall takes care to show how Ignatius advances Pauline insights faithfully while never being afraid to adapt scriptural terms and traditions to meet the challenges of his own flock. Especially important in this middle section is how Ignatius saw the Christian life as teleologically unifying earth and heaven, anticipating Augustine of Hippo’s wordplay of living in spe but not yet in re. Since the Logos is the first and last principle () of reality, but has now even taken on flesh and revealed the fullness of the Father to those still on their way, “the person of Christ, his deeds, and...

CRISTIANISMO, PODER E ESPAÇO NA ANTIGUIDADE TARDIA: o episkopeion como expressão do poder do bispo

RESUMO Na historiografia tradicional, a elite eclesiástica tardo-antiga exercia ampla autoridade e gozava de prestígio sendo capaz de influenciar imperadores em determinados acontecimentos. Um dos exemplos mais evocados, que evidenciaria o poder dos bispos, é o narrado por João Crisóstomo sobre a influência do bispo Flaviano junto Teodósio no conflito do Levante das Estátuas (387 d.C.). No presente artigo, argumentamos que os bispos ainda não exerciam tal influência no contexto do século IV. Para tanto, recorremos ao debate sobre o episkopeion a partir das evidências arqueológicas.No século IV, não há indícios da existência de residências episcopais definidas, separadas do espaço da Igreja - estas somente se desenvolveram entre os séculos V e VI. Isso significaria pensar que aquele desenvolvimento estivesse relacionado à ampliação gradual do prestígio e da atuação sociopolítica do bispo (CEYLAN, 2005, p. 170; MARANO, 2005, p. 97). Logo, refletiremos sobre o caso do bispo Flaviano e sua interferência no Levante das Estátuas de modo a definir os parâmetros do poder episcopal antioqueno no século IV.

Depiction of the martyrdom of Saint Ignatius Theophorus in the prothesis of Novo Hopovo

In the art of the Christian East, the depictions of the martyrdom of Saint Ignatius Theophorus, bishop of Antioch, can usually be found among the illustrations of the Menologion. The scene from the monastery of Novo Hopovo, dated to the 1600s, is one of the rare independent depictions of Saint Ignatius?s martyrdom. The paper discusses the iconography of this scene and possible reasons for placing it in the prothesis of the katholikon of Novo Hopovo. The inclusion of a scene showing the martyrdom of the bishop of Antioch into the thematic repertoire of this compartment is a solitary example in Serbian medieval and Byzantine monumental painting.

안디옥의 감독, 이그나티우스의 구약 성서 이해

본 논문의 연구 목적은 안디옥의 감독 이그나티우스가 구약 성서를 어떻게 이해했는가를 파악하는 데 있다. 이그나티우스는 사도들과 긴밀한 관계에서 기독교 신앙과 정체성을 이어준 대표적 속사도 교부로서 그의 서신에 나타난 신학 사상은 중요한 의미가 있다. 특히 기독교에 대한 박해 상황에서 순교 신앙으로 기독교 정체성을 부각시켰으며, 유대교와 이교, 영지주의를 비롯한 이단에 대처하면서 유대교의 경전인 구약 성서를 어떻게 이해했는지를 밝혔다.<BR> 초기 교부들의 구약 성서에 대한 이해는 크게 세 가지로 요약된다. 첫째, 예언의 증거로서 구약이 예수 그리스도의 모형(typoi)이며, 예언의 성취를 증명하기 위함이었다. 둘째, 교훈적 설교로 거룩한 삶의 귀감(exempla)을 제시하며, 구약 성서와의 연속성을 강조하기 위함이었다. 셋째, 성서의 고대성으로 기독교 정체성과 복음이 구약 성서와 연속성에 있을 뿐만 아니라, 성서적 진리로서의 고대성을 강조하기 위함이었다. 이중에서 대부분의 초기 교부들은 예수 그리스도 안에서 구약의 예언이 성취되었음을 강조하는 ‘예언의 증거’가 가장 많이 나타난다. <BR> 반면에 이그나티우스가 인용한 구약 성서는 주로 교훈적 설교를 위함이었지만, 부분적으로 예언의 증거도 강조했다. 그는 서신에서 유대교와의 구분을 언급하기 했지만, 선지서나 모세의 율법이 복음과 동등한 진리의 역할을 할 수 있음을 보여주었다. 결국 이그나티우스는 구약 성서의 중심 주제가 예수 그리스도의 죽으심과 부활에 있음을 드러냈고, 선지자들의 예언이 그리스도의 죽으심과 부활로 성취되었음을 강조했다.

Loving God… unto death: The witness of the early Christians

The article focuses on the social and theological dynamics that drove early Christ-followers to understand martyrdom as being a legitimate and honourable way by means of which to demonstrate love for God to the uttermost limits. Martyrdom is rooted much earlier in the Jewish tradition, though it received new impetus from the second century AD onwards. The study seeks to trace its raison d’être within the pages of the New Testament, both in the sayings of Jesus and the letters of Paul. It is argued that the apostle’s theology of suffering provided sufficient grounds for such an understanding, which finds in Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, one of its major representatives. Finally, the study seeks to reflect on the plausible actualisation of non-bloody martyrdom for today’s Christian discipleship, if it has any relevance at all.

Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition (review)

Reviewed by: Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition Robin Darling Young Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition. By Claudia Rapp. [The Transformation of the Classical Heritage, Vol. 37.](Berkeley: University of California Press. 2005. Pp. xii, 346. $55.00. ISBN 978-0-520-24296-3.) If its title provides a near occasion for cognitive dissonance, it is not because this book lacks an interesting thesis and rich documentation: Rapp amply illustrates the activities and aims of the numerous early Christian leaders whose rise as a new order of politicians revolutionized the Mediterranean world. An exception proves her case. Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch from 260 to 272, lost his job for doctrinal error, but his accusers added charges of moral turpitude for good measure; yet he could be deposed only after his protector Zenobia suffered military defeat. If holiness could not secure his office, its alleged lack demonstrated the justice of his punishment. The book has two parts. The first, chapters 1 through 4, describes the quality of holiness as a necessity—no less than for the ascetic—for the bishop and traces it through three aspects. The second part, chapters 5 through 9, considers bishops' specific contexts in late antiquity and the institutions that grew out of them. Rapp begins her treatment with a review of previous scholarship on the episcopacy in early Christianity. She distinguishes three groups of previous studies: histories of the episcopacy's development, ending with Constantine; the "public role of bishops" in urban or rural sees; and biographies of particularly notable bishops. Rapp wants to dispute the importance of the reign of Constantine, particularly dear to European historians as a watershed, and, by making the chronological range of her book the third to sixth century, to discount the corrosiveness of imperial sponsorship upon Church and bishop. She also recommends a "more integrative approach" in the studies of particular [End Page 779]bishops to link their activities within Stadtherrschaftto "their religious position as Christian leaders" (p. 13). In part 1, Rapp groups the "pragmatic," "spiritual," and "ascetic" aspects of this leadership. The method and content of this part might be called theological, because, compared with the second, it is based upon the concept of the "holy man," especially following the discussion of Peter Brown; and because, to extend the concept from the ascetic and patronusdescribed by Brown, it gathers examples from various works to arrive at a synthetic portrait of the quality of episcopal holiness. By contrast, part 2 is more empirical, beginning with a contrast between two bishops—Synesius of Cyrene and Theodore of Sykeon—and going on to examine social contexts (chapter 6, cities (chapter 7, empire (i.e., the relationship between empire and bishops in the imperial system [chapter 8]), and ending in chapter 9 with a description of what was, after all, a notable change in the significance of this highest Christian office—the transition "from model Christians to model citizens" (p. 275). Here the book seems to revert to a previous historiographical model, by claiming that "[i]n the two centuries after Constantine, a new understanding of the episcopate developed that privileged the bishop's pragmatic authority over his ascetic authority" (p. 274)—in other words, it reduced prior expectations for holiness and drew upon status and money to make the bishop an indispensable urban and imperial official. A few errors should be noted—the Apostolic Traditionis known to be a composite of the fourth century, not a witness to the second; the Didacheprobably favors local officials, not the mobile "prophets and teachers" against whom it cautions; and in the fifth century, the miaphysite Peter the Iberian certainly did not support Nestorius. Robin Darling Young University of Notre Dame Copyright © 2009 The Catholic University of America Press

Pluralism of ethnic identities as a factor in the formation of parallel Orthodox hierarchical structures in Ukraine

Eucharistic ecclesiology (in its universal dimension), which underlies Orthodox ecclesiology, has at its core a communion between the Local Churches. In practice, it manifests itself in the mutual recognition between the various autocephalous and autonomous Churches. The head of a separate Church of the Universal Orthodoxy during the Liturgy commemorates all the leaders of other self-governing Orthodox Churches. Communion through the sacraments also happens between the Churches, namely, unity is manifested through communion in the Eucharist. The teachings of the early Christian author, Ignatius Theophoros, Bishop of Antioch, formed the basis of the local structure of the Church. The main principle of his theology is the unity of all the faithful of a certain territory around his bishop, that is, the common communion of all Christians in the Eucharist, which only the bishop of that territory is entitled to fulfill. The bishop, in turn, is a member of the "universal bishopric" and through it the local church is part of the one universal Church.

The Laity — Bishop's pawn? Ignatius of Antioch on the Obedient Christian

In c.lO6 AD Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch, was being led through the province of Asia to Rome and to martyrdom. As he went, he wrote letters to a number of the Asian Christian churches on the Aegean coastline. His aim was to ensure the cohesion of these local communities by encouraging their maintenance of purity in practice and in idea. To this end his letters stressed a strongly constituted, centralised ecclesiastical authority, whose sphere of activity was delimited by a clear boundary between the church and the world.

If I Suffer … Epistolary Authority in Ignatius of Antioch

Sometime during the second decade of the second century CE, Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, was conveyed under guard to Rome where he expected to leave this world through the mouths of the beasts in the arena. Along his journey he stopped at Philadelphia and Smyrna. At each stop he received visitors from a number of churches in the area. He, in turn, wrote letters to those churches and to the church at Rome. The letters of Ignatius have been the subject of scholarly investigation for over a century. The authenticity of the middle recension of those letters is almost universally acknowledged. These letters have been studied for the light they can shed on church structure in Asia Minor at the beginning of the second century, the theology of Ignatius within its historical context, and the distinctive personality of Ignatius. One aspect of these documents which has implications for all other interests has not been satisfactorily explained, namely, how Ignatius understood his own letter writing activity. What gave Ignatius the audacity to interfere in the life of churches outside of Syria, and what kind of authority did he expect the admonitions contained in his letters to carry?

The Bishop of Antioch and the Heretics: A Study of a Primitive Christology

The Bishop of Antioch and the Heretics: A Study of a Primitive Christology

The Christology of the Council of Antioch (268. C.E.) Reconsidered

Paul of Samosata, who succeeded Demetrianus as bishop of Antioch in 260 C. E., faced heresy charges early in his career and formal interrogations in 264 and 268 at synods in Antioch. The second of these condemned him. This study seeks to reinterpret the Christological position of the faction opposing Paul and to analyze its implications for the later development of eastern Christian thought. Of course, the bishops and presbyters who met at Antioch in the 260s to discuss the morals and doctrines of Paul did not represent a unified doctrinal position. Gathered from various regions, they revealed a diversity of motives and concerns. Even the label “Origenists,” often used to characterize the group, is misleading. Although many of the attending prelates followed Origen and his school, there is no record of conscious appeal to the writings of the Alexandrian master.

The Letters of St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch: the "Fortuna" of Their Fifteenth-century Editions

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Letters of St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch: the "Fortuna" of Their Fifteenth-century EditionsDennis E. RhodesDennis E. Rhodes Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America Volume 57, Number 2Second Quarter, 1963 Published for the Bibliographical Society of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/pbsa.57.2.24300876 Views: 1Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

True Life in Death

T HE expression true life in is taken, of course, from St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch. It comes from one of the letters1 he wrote in the course of his journey towards martyrdom at Rome, and is one of a series of paradoxical expressions in which he tries to describe the meaning of Jesus Christ. This particular expression, however, is the most typical of all those which he uses, for, as Rudolf Bultmann has well remarked, death and life are the opposites that govern St. Ignatius' thinking.2

An Approach to Ignatius

Recent studies of Ignatius the bishop of Antioch have been fresh and varied, upon the whole. Some of his theological ideas have been reconsidered, as for example his conceptions of the Trinity by Jules Lebreton (Recherches de Science Religieuse, 1925, 97 f., 393 f.) and Loofs (Theophilus von Antiochien adversus Marcionem, 1930, 194 f.). His relation to the gnostic movement occupies H. Schlier's Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zu den Ignatiusbriefen (1929), and emerges in Lietzmann's Geschichte der Alten Kirche, I (1932, 251 f.) and Walter Bauer's Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christenthum (1934, 65 f.). The psychological interest crops up in Dr. Streeter's ingenious account of his attitude towards church-orders (The Primitive Church, 1929), while wider surveys are furnished by Dr. F. A. Schilling (Mysticism of Ignatius of Antioch, 1932) and Dr. Cyril Richardson (The Christianity of Ignatius of Antioch, 1935). These monographs represent an advance upon the old-fashioned practice of grouping Ignatius among the so-called ‘apostolic fathers,’ or of estimating him in the wake of a ‘mystical succession’ headed by the apostles Paul and John.