Catherine Conybeare: Writing on the Edge: Patrology as Marginalia

Patristic texts have always challenged the putative boundary between the historical and the literary: for the theological has generally been treated as neither. Theology has been cordoned off in a class of its own, occasionally mined for nuggets of the historical but, with rare exceptions, never read for its literary properties. In this paper, I shall not attempt to reinscribe theology as history or as literature. Instead, I shall propose for it a medium that stakes no claims in either, and yet may be read as both. Building on recent work that highlights the importance of dialogue in late antiquity, I ask: what do we make of important patristic writings that masquerade as dialogue but in fact respond to a previously circulated text? Augustine’s violent dispute with Julian of Eclanum, especially the Opus Imperfectum, his last work, forms an excellent case in point; but there are many other examples from the Augustinian corpus alone. I propose that we consider these interventions as equivalent to marginalia, and discuss what the consequences might be of doing so. Finally, I pose the question: what if we were to treat patrology itself as a mighty set of marginalia to the previously circulated text of the bible? What characteristics of patrology might this notion illuminate?