Franz Cumont Research Articles

«КАКИЕ МНЕНИЯ О ДЕМОНАХ У ЭЛЛИНОВ» МИХАИЛА ПСЕЛЛА (ТЕКСТ, ПЕРЕВОД И КОММЕНТАРИИ)

The publication presents a commented Russian translation of a short compilation entitled Τίνα περὶ δαιμόνων δοξάζουσιν Ἕλληνες (“What are the Hellenes’ Opinions of Demons”, Latin Graecorum opiniones de daemonibus) attributed to Michael Psellus (1018 – ca. 1078). The text is a compact overview of religious and adjacent practices of the “Hellenes”, meaning the pagan Greeks, from the Neoplatonic perspective, which goes back, eventually, to the Chaldaic Oracles, the “Bible of Neoplatonists” as Franz Cumont has named that fragmentarily extant collection of the 2nd century AD. Indubitably Michael Psellus has been strongly influenced by the Oracles, as well as by the lost commentary on this work by Proclus. Nevertheless, the attribution to Michael Psellus of the Opinions, as well as of the dialogue Timotheus, or On demons (Τιμόθεος ἢ περὶ δαιμόνων), another, somewhat more extensive essay on the same topics (demonology, sacrifices, mysteries, sorcery, magic, divination), seems to be definitively unconvincing, judging by purely formal (lingual) criteria. It would be much more plausible to attribute these writings to some students or followers of this prominent representative of Byzantine proto-Humanism, conveniently designating these anonymous authors as “Pseudo-Psellus”. The text of the Opinions allows to promptly identify many cross-references not only to Proclus, but also to other Neoplatonists (Porphyry, Iamblichus, Synesius), and the section on the mysteries almost literally borrows (though not without blatant distortions) from Clement of Alexandria’s Protrepticus. The Russian translation is based on Paul Gautier’s edition (1988), which is itself based on the oldest manuscript, Vaticanus gr. 1411 (fin. s. xiv), containing the text of the compilation (ff. 33r–34v).

Strange Meeting at Salihiyeh: Who Discovered (or Encountered, or Identified, or Invented) Dura-Europos, and When?

The centenary of the establishment of the Department of Classics at the University of Kraków coincides with that of the beginnings of the study of the ‘Pompeii of the Syrian Desert.’In spring 1920, British Indian soldiers digging in the ruins known as Salihiyeh overlooking the Euphrates accidentally revealed ancient paintings. Recorded by archaeologist James Henry Breasted, these discoveries would soon lead to further excavations by Franz Cumont (1922–1923), and eventually to the great Yale-French Academy expedition under Mikhail Rostovtzeff (1928–1937). By then the site was famous as ‘Dura-Europos,’giving us remarkable insights into Hellenistic Greek, Parthian, Roman, early Christian and Jewish life in the Middle East. Not the least of the discoveries related to the soldiers of Dura’s Roman garrison. This paper traces the history of the revelation—and, in part, invention—of Dura-Europos in the 1920s. It is a story of eminent scholars, but also of others who actually revealed the evidence: soldiers, both officers and men, of the armies of the British and French empires which dominated the region at the time. Today, at a time of ‘decolonisation’of scholarship, the very formulation ‘Dura-Europos’itself is a subject of contention.

The Correspondence between Georg Wissowa and Franz Cumont , 1888 to 1913

The Correspondence between Georg Wissowa and Franz Cumont , 1888 to 1913

Narrating the Past and the Future: The Position of the religions orientales and the mystères païens in the Evolutionary Histories of Religion of Franz Cumont and Alfred Loisy

Abstract:In their grand narratives on the ancient history of religions, the Belgian historian of religions, Franz Cumont (1868 – 1947) and his French colleague and correspondent, Alfred Loisy (1857 – 1940) both assigned a prominent place to the so-called pagan mystery religions. This paper seeks to identify the specific theories of religion and the deeper motivations underpinning Cumont’s and Loisy’s historiographical construction of the mystery cults as a distinct type of religion within their evolutionary accounts of the history of religions. Through a comparative analysis of their rich correspondence (1908 – 1940) and a selection of their publications, we demonstrate how their historical studies of the religious transformations in the Roman Empire, their in-depth dialogues in the troubled times in which they lived, and their philosophical views on the overall history and future of religion, were in fact mutually constitutive.

Why were the “oriental cults” invented?

The article is devoted to the analysis of the historiographical background of the category of the so-called oriental cults/oriental religions created in the 19th century and developed by Franz Cumont. We discuss the role of this term in 20th-century historiography with the focus on the works of Tadeusz Zieliński that are important to the reception of the oriental cults metaphor. We argue that the concept of oriental cults/oriental religions in its original version is not an effective or useful research tool. However, as a historiographical concept it has fulfilled its role in a threefold way: firstly, it drew scholars’ attention to the vitality of ancient religious experience, secondly, it established the fact that Roman religion was a living organism, naturally adapted to changing political, social and cultural conditions, thirdly, it helped to understand the principles behind the construction of metaphors in the academic discourse.

Alfred Loisy’s Comparative Method in Les mystères païens et le mystère chrétien

While the work of the “father of Roman Catholic Modernism” prior to his excommunication in 1908 has been extensively studied, Alfred Loisy’s later career as professor of Histoire des Religions at the Collège de France has received less attention. This article examines his original contribution to comparative methodology for the interrelation between early Christianity and the pagan mystery cults. Loisy’s explicit aim was to integrate the historical, sociological, psychological, and anthropological approaches of his time into an original and all-encompassing methodological framework. Our article pays special attention to Loisy’s predominant yet hitherto unnoticed use of a model of analogy. Crucial to this interpretation are (a) the idea that the Christian mystery and the pagan mysteries are the result of a universal and independent, analogous evolution of religions, and (b) the theory that ritual precedes myth, adopted from the Cambridge Myth and Ritual School. We show that Loisy’s novelty resided in the fact that he consistently applied these principles to both the pagan cults and to Christianity, but it will also become clear that his systematic approach entailed major problems for the individual features of the compared cults, problems which he tended to overlook. Loisy combined this analogical framework with a psychological interpretation of the genesis of the belief in Christ’s resurrection and with a historical-genealogical explanation of Paul’s knowledge and use of the mystery cults. The article also uses unpublished material from Loisy’s correspondence with Franz Cumont.

Race and Religious Transformations in Rome

Contemporaries of Franz Cumont (1868-1947) often applied racial theories to the supposed cultural, spiritual and political decadence of Rome, holding Oriental immigrants and their religions responsible. In his Oriental Religions (1906) Cumont explicitly rejected Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Otto Seeck, arguing instead for spiritual progress in Late Antiquity, under Oriental influence. Our analysis shows certain ambiguities and stereotypes in Cumont’s publications on the Orient. We also present unpublished archive material from the Academia Belgica in Rome, showing Cumont accepted, in the 1920s, racial theories (Tenney Frank). He now explained the religious transformations in Rome by a change in the population.

MITHRAS REDISCOVERED II. FURTHER NOTES ON CIMRM 1938 AND 1986

Recently, an important Mithraic relief was rediscovered and republished by the author of these lines in collaboration with George Bounegru and Victor Sava. The relief, known in the literature as CIMRM 1938 was for a long time considered a „disappeared” monument, the only laconic description being that of Marteen J. Vermaseren from his monumental corpus. Due to the recently rediscovered photographs of the relief and the detailed analysis of the correspondence between Bela Cserni and Franz Cumont, the CIMRM 1938 is now became available for further research. In this article, I will add some further historiographic and iconographic notes on one of the biggest Mithraic reliefs found in Dacia, solving also another mysterious piece in Vermaseren’s catalogue, the CIMRM 1986. The article is also the first publication of Bela Cserni’s photograph about the relief.

Da Nietzsche a Heidegger: Mondo classico e civiltà europea

Da Nietzsche a Heidegger: Mondo classico e civiltà europea

Art and Archaeology

Mit Mythen Leben, the 2004 study of Roman sarcophagi by Paul Zanker and Björn Ewald, has appeared (with updated references) in English. This is a cause for gladness among all Anglophones engaged in the teaching of ancient art, because for non-German readers there was frankly nothing to match the intellectual scope and illustrative quality of Zanker–Ewald. Our only regret may be that students will find this explanation of the imagery on the sarcophagi so convincing that further debate seems futile. It is well known that Roman sarcophagi, of which thousands survive from the second and third centuries ad, have had a ‘presence’ or ‘afterlife’ in Western art history for many centuries: some were even re-used for Christian burials (the tale of one such case in Viterbo, the so-called ‘Bella Galiana’ sarcophagus, might be one addendum to the bibliography here). But what did they once signify? Many were produced in marble workshops of the eastern Mediterranean, from which the suspicion arises that Roman customers may not have exercised much discrimination when it came to selecting a subject or decorative scheme. (Our authors rather sidestep the question of how much was carved at sites of origin, such as Aphrodisias, then completed – with portrait features added? – in Rome.) Accepting, however, that an elaborate sarcophagus was a considerable investment – the cost calculated as about six months’ or even a year's salary for a captain in the Praetorian Guard – and supposing that the imagery were more than a status symbol, we are left with essentially two options. One is to follow the Belgian scholar Franz Cumont and others in analysing the iconography in terms of its clues to Roman beliefs about the afterlife. For certain images of myth this seems to work very well – the story of Alcestis, for example; for others, rather abstruse allegories must be sought: what eschatology is lodged in Medea's tragedy, or a scene of Achilles on Skyros? The alternative is to follow Zanker and Ewald in supposing that the sarcophagi do not so much represent the belief systems of the deceased as offer a sort of visual counselling to the bereaved. Hence the title – living with myths, not dying with them: for the regular occasions on which Romans were obliged to remember and honour the dead (parentalia, rosaria, etc.), sarcophagi on display in family burial enclosures provided ‘encouragement to free association’ (31) in various therapeutic and consolatory ways. These of course encompass some of Cumont's reconstructions of Stoic comfort and so on – but with its emphasis upon the response of viewers, the Zanker–Ewald approach clearly allows more flexibility of significance. To say that the message often reduces to ‘it could be worse’ is a brutal summary of the sympathetic and subtle readings expounded in this book. Yet occasionally one could wish for more sophistry. For example, in discussing the consolatory potential of images of Niobe and her unfortunate offspring – a ‘massacre of the innocents’ with obvious pertinence to mors immatura – the authors allude (74) to the curious persuasive strategy deployed by Achilles when he, at last in a mood to yield up the mangled body of Hector, invites the grief-stricken Priam to supper (Il. 24.603 ff.). As Malcolm Willcock long ago showed (CQ 14 [1964], 141 ff.), Achilles resorts to a formulaic paradeigma: ‘You must do this, because X, who was in more or less the same situation as you, and a more significant person, did it.’ Only in this the case the a fortiori argument relies upon a rather implausible twist to the usual story, namely that Niobe, having witnessed the deaths of her twelve children – and with their corpses still unburied, since everyone in the vicinity has been turned to stone – adjourns to dinner. No other telling of the myth mentions this detail: indeed, Niobe herself is usually the one turned to stone. Of course this version suits Achilles well enough: if Niobe lost all her children but not her appetite, why should Priam, who has lost merely one of his many sons and daughters, hesitate to share a meal? But did Homer expect his audience to be disconcerted by such mythical manipulation, or was it typical of what happened when myth served as consolation? And if Achilles/Homer may resort to such embroidery, did educated Romans feel inclined to do likewise? Was this part of the presence of myth in ‘everyday life’?

“It is Poor Buonaiuti’s Turn to Burn.” The Condemnation of the Rivista di Scienza delle Religioni. According to the Correspondence of E. Buonaiuti, F. Cumont and A. Loisy

On April 12, 1916, the Holy Office condemned the historical-critical Rivista di Scienza delle Religioni, founded by the Italian Modernist priest Ernesto Buonaiuti. Buonaiuti and 3 other priests who had written for the journal were suspended a divinis. Based on Buonaiuti’s account of the affair in his autobiography, it has generally been assumed that Pietro Gasparri, Secretary of State of Benedict XV, helped the unfortunate 4 and negotiated with the Office on their behalf. This paper will shed new light on the affair through unknown testimonies, from the correspondence of the Belgian historian of religions Franz Cumont and the French Modernist Alfred Loisy. Their letters, complemented by other unpublished sources, show that the anti-Modernist campaign against the 4 priests was inextricably intertwined with a struggle for power within the Curia, between the camp of Benedict XV & Gasparri and of the late Pius X & Merry del Val. In reality, both Gasparri and Buonaiuti himself played quite a different role tha...

Franz Cumont’s Syrian Tour. A Belgian Archaeologist in the Ottoman Empire

Franz Cumont’s Syrian Tour. A Belgian Archaeologist in the Ottoman Empire. This paper highlights the Western scientific traveller as an intermediary between Orient and Occident around the turn of the nineteenth century by presenting a case study on the Belgian archaeologist and historian of religions, Franz Cumont (1868-1947), and the dossier of the journey he undertook in Northern Syria, May 1907. After a discussion of this classicist’s relation to the Orient, I give an account of Cumont’s Syrian tour, based on three different writing contexts : the academic output of the expedition in Northern Syria, Cumont’s private travel notes, and both his active and passive correspondence. Still focusing on the case of Franz Cumont and the dossier of his archaeological journey in 1907, in a third and fourth section I examine two ways in which the Orient was brought to the Occident by the scientific traveller. Firstly, by the acquisition and transfer of archaeological material from the Orient to the Occident, providing Western institutions with Eastern artefacts. Secondly, by the transfer of ideas and images : how did the Occidental scientific traveller, the archaeologist, convey his experiences with the “ real” Orient to the European readership ? I will disclose how Franz Cumont expressed his evaluation of the ancient Orient, which he studied, and the contemporary Orient, which he experienced during his travels.

Symbolisme, évolution rituelle et morale dans l'histoire des religions: le cas du Taurobolium dans les publications et la correspondance de Franz Cumont et d'Alfred Loisy

As an historian of religions Franz Cumont was an evolutionist. His publications on the origins and the evolution of the taurobolium-criobolium, and extracts from his correspondence with Alfred Loisy show to what extent his interpretation of this rite was influenced by the paradigm in which he worked. Mazdaism, Judaism and Greek philosophy were for him the motors of a spiritual interpretation of a primitive rite from Asia-Minor, and the success of this rite in the West was part of the history of the evolution of ancient cults stylized by the symbolism of the elements. Cumont saw this history dialectically, with alliances between different oriental religions. The telos of this evolution was a moral and universalist spirituality and belief in astral immortality. Loisy worked within a different paradigm (analogue genealogy) and the letters between these two scholars show that they combined the greatest respect and friendship for each other with the determination to think about the links between Christianity and the mystery cults from within their own paradigm.

St Paul in the early 20th century history of religions. “The mystic of Tarsus” and the pagan mystery cults after the correspondence of Franz Cumont and Alfred Loisy

Alfred Loisy (1857-1940), the excommunicated French modernist priest and historian of religions, and Franz Cumont (1868-1947), the Belgian historian of religions and expert in pagan mystery cults, conducted a lively correspondence in which they intensively exchanged ideas. One of their favorite subjects for discussion was the dependence of St Paul on the pagan mysteries. Loisy dealt with this early 20th century moot point for Protestant, Catholic and non-religious scholars in his publications, while Cumont always remained silent. This study of their unpublished letters sheds new light on the strategies lying behind their publications. It reveals what they chose not to say, and what they meant by what they did say.

Amphores grecques timbrées découvertes à Suse (SO-Iran)

During his excavations, now more than fifty years ago, Roman Ghirshman has found in the area of the so called necropolis of the 'Ville des Artisans' at Susa, a few complete and fragmentary amphorae with stamped handles, most of them Rhodian. Another Rhodian stamp was uncovered during his excavations at the Apadana. They are to be situated in the last quarter of the 3(rd)/first quarter of the 2(nd) century BC and can now be added to the known corpus of amphorae stamps found in numerous parts in the Near East. A complete amphora is likely to bear two unique types of stamps, one of them mentioning almost certainly the eponym Pi O lambda upsilon kappa rho alpha tau eta zeta and turns out to be an important addition to the general corpus of (early) Rhodian stamps. Because of the recent developments in the study of the chronology of Rhodian stamps (the chronologie basse of Gerald Finkielsztejn), two more examples from Susa found by Roland de Mecquenem and previously published by Franz Cumont are equally reconsidered. However, all together they seem to be among the rare stamped amphorae that have been found so far in Iran.

"Enslavement to fate," "cosmic pessimism" and other explorations of the Late Roman psyche: A brief history of a historiographical trend

This article investigates the intellectual connections within a community of international scholars active in the first half of this century. Franz Cumont, André-Jean Festugière, E. R. Dodds and Arthur Darby Nock all shared a conceptual and methodological approach to the religious "attitudes" of the Late Roman period. These scholars maintained that "cosmic pessimism" or a sense of having been "enslaved" by the inexorable influence of fate resulted in a religious environment that gave rise to various soteriologically oriented religious movements, of which Christianity served as the culmination. This article reviews the assessments and methods of this cadre of scholars, noting the influence of "enslavement to fate" and "cosmic pessimism" as tropes in later scholarship, and briefly offers an alternate way to understand religion and religions in Roman antiquity.

THE EXCLUSION OF WOMEN IN THE MITHRAIC MYSTERIES: ANCIENT OR MODERN?

AbstractThe following paper deals with the scholarly supposition that females were excluded from the ancient mystery cult of Mithraism. This notion has been part of scholarly dialogue about the religion since Franz Cumont, the father of modern Mithraic studies, introduced it in the late nineteenth century. Though many of his conclusions about Mithraism have been challenged or refuted in the past thirty years, the particular idea that the cult excluded women has persisted, and actually has become taken for granted by most scholars. Thanks to the publication of much important archaeological and epigraphical evidence during the past fifty years, a reexamination of this notion is now possible. By surveying a few examples of Mithraic inscriptions and iconography in light of heretofore discounted textual clues from such ancient authors as Porphyry, Jerome, and Tertullian, it will be argued that the theory of universal female exclusion from Mithraism is untenable. In order to demonstrate this, it will be necessary to challenge and scrutinize the work of the only modern scholar to explore gender within ancient Mithraism, Richard Gordon. Instead of starting from a preconceived notion of exclusion and attempting to explain away the various exceptions to this rule, this article will tally these "exceptions" to conclude simply that women were involved with Mithraic groups in at least some locations of the empire. Some possible implications of this conclusion then will be suggested.

« L'immortalité appartient au sage » : Franz Cumont et l'art érotique

• Franz Cumont published in 1940 an erotic funerary monument. This provides the occasion to examine the attitude of the scientific comunity, during the first half of the XXth century, towards erotic art and its historical meaning. Through the study of different publications and pieces of Cumont's scientific correspondence, we focus on his specific attitude and its evolution from the beginning of the century till his death (1947) in order to understand Cumont's conception of the historian's profession.

The Mysteries of Mithras: A New Account of their Genesis

In 1896 Franz Cumont published, as the second volume of hisTextes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra, the dossier of documents on the basis of which he was to render, three years later, the first truly historical account of the transformation of Mithra-worship from a branch of Iranian Mazdaism to a Roman mystery cult.This transformative process, as he envisaged it, was long and evolutionary. He used a geological metaphor to describe its stages, as theology and practice were passed down the ages and across the lands from Iran to Rome:Le fond de cette religion, sa couche inférieure et primordiale, est la foi de l'ancien Iran, d'où elle tire son origine. Au-dessus de ce substratum mazdéen, s'est déposé en Babylonie un sédiment épais de doctrines sémitiques, puis en Asie Mineure les croyances locales y ont ajouté quelques alluvions. Enfin, une végétation touffue d'idées helléniques a grandi sur ce sol fertile, et dérobe en partie à nos recherches sa véritable nature.Central to Cumont's scenario was Anatolia and the Mazdean diaspora that survived (and flourished) there after the fall of the Achaemenian empire. It was there during the Hellenistic Age that ‘Mithraism received approximately its definitive form’, although Cumont hesitated to pinpoint the precise time and area.

The Mysteries of Mithras: A New Account of their Genesis

In 1896 Franz Cumont published, as the second volume of his Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra, the dossier of documents on the basis of which he was to render, three years later, the first truly historical account of the transformation of Mithra-worship from a branch of Iranian Mazdaism to a Roman mystery cult.This transformative process, as he envisaged it, was long and evolutionary. He used a geological metaphor to describe its stages, as theology and practice were passed down the ages and across the lands from Iran to Rome:Le fond de cette religion, sa couche inférieure et primordiale, est la foi de l'ancien Iran, d'où elle tire son origine. Au-dessus de ce substratum mazdéen, s'est déposé en Babylonie un sédiment épais de doctrines sémitiques, puis en Asie Mineure les croyances locales y ont ajouté quelques alluvions. Enfin, une végétation touffue d'idées helléniques a grandi sur ce sol fertile, et dérobe en partie à nos recherches sa véritable nature.Central to Cumont's scenario was Anatolia and the Mazdean diaspora that survived (and flourished) there after the fall of the Achaemenian empire. It was there during the Hellenistic Age that ‘Mithraism received approximately its definitive form’, although Cumont hesitated to pinpoint the precise time and area.