Anthony GLAISE: The Quod Christus sit Deus(CPG 4326) in manuscripts : A New Perspective about Chrysostom's Polemical Works ?

Since the first edition of the Quod Christus sit Deus in 1966, scholars have not shown any interest in this text and, as a consequence, it has never been analyzed accurately. However, what is at stake here is the manuscript tradition of this text. How has this text been received and understood throughout centuries ? For this purpose, we have to focus on sequences of texts and the marginal remarks in the manuscripts. In our case, these informations enlighten greatly how the polemical corpus written by John Chrysostom was received by copists. We can first make an indicative observation : including the Quod Christus sit Deus into a larger range of texts stresses that the copists were aware of the strong thematic and stylistic proximity between this text and the other Chrysostomical texts, especially the polemical ones (for instance, the Discourses against the Jews, those against Anomeans or
the Discourse on blessed Babylas). Furthermore, the Quod Christus sit Deus has been copied together with hagiographies and non-polemical texts written by John Chrysostom or by other authors. This phaenomenon of concatenation of texts is relevant to study the reception of the Quod Christus sit Deus as a Chrysostomical, polemical and rhetorical text. Moreover, it leads us not only to compare the way these texts defend the Christian orthodox dogma, but also to reassess a significant pattern of the Chrysostomical predication : the central position of rhetoric in the definition of the Christian identity.