Martin Claes: Anthony’s oratio perpetua in Augustine’s mystagogy of inner transformation. From oratio perpetua in Evagrius’ Vita Antonii towards congruity in Augustine’s De Trinitate

Augustine’s attitude towards monasticism is dominated by ambiguity. On the one hand he criticizes monastic communities for their exaggerated expectations from ascetics and their optimistic view on the potential of human will. On the other hand, on crucial moments Augustine’s oeuvre testifies of great admiration for the literary personage of Antony.
In this paper I shall argue that, despite his critical stance towards monastic communities, it was the reception of the literary personage of the desert father Antony (oratio perpetua) that has contributed on the level of epistemology to the growth of Augustine’s mystagogy of inner transformation after the image of God (De Trinitate XIV.5.23). This inner process finds its expression on ethical and social level when Christian community life is incorporated in the living Body of Christ.
In this communication I will concentrate on a text reading of Evagrius’ Vita Antonii and Augustine’s De Trinitate. It is the aim of this communication to make some preliminary observations on Augustine’s preoccupation with congruity of words and acts on the level of epistemology in the context of Evagrius’ Vita Antonii.

Dionysios Skliris: The Philosophical Implications of Maximus the Confessor’s Eschatology

As the last thinker of Late Antiquity, Maximus could be examined in relation to the past as a bold reformer of Aristotelianism. He could also be observed in relation to the future: Some innovative elements of his thought, such as his historical dialectic, entail a Christian transformation of the Platonic-Aristotelian legacy in the direction of its greater historization and interiorization. Maximus is thinking of the end (telos) just like Aristotle, as entailing a passage from potentiality (dynamis) to actualization (energeia). He also has a particularly Aristotelian sense of retroactive final causation, namely the fact that we can understand a being only from its end. He also uses a notion of “attraction” (helxis, cf. PG 90,1389A) that is causation and motion take place mainly through attraction and not through impulsion. But Maximus transforms the Aristotelian teleology radically by putting it in historical and eschatological terms. The field of passage from potentiality to actuality is not Biology or nature but History. And the end which attracts is not natural maturity but the eschaton which presents nevertheless a gap of radical discontinuity in relation to natural evolution. Eschatology at the same time confirms teleology and “crucifies” it. In our presentation, we shall try to examine how Maximus receives but also modifies Aristotelian teleology as well as the relation of his thought with the later development of dialectics. We shall also endeavour to develop the philosophical implications of his eschatology especially in what concerns the theory of being, motion, time and activity (energeia).

Pierluigi Lanfranchi: The Use of Emotions in John Chrysostom’s Sermons against the Jews

The aim of my paper is to explore the emotional dimension of the interaction between Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity. More precisely, I am interested in the way Christian authors used emotions in their anti-Jewish polemics. This approach allows us to grasp the mechanisms – rhetorical and psychological – which the polemicists exploited in order to convey their message. It also makes it possible to consider in a different way the relationship between rhetoric and reality, between the texts and their historical and social context.
As all religious groups, Christian communities were also “emotional communities”, that is groups that share the same rules of emotional expression and attach (or do not attach) importance to the same feelings. I will analyse as a case study the discourses against the Jews delivered by John Chrysostom in Antioch in 386-387.
By studying these sermons I try to answer the following questions: what kind of emotions did Chrysostom mobilize against the Jews? What did he mean while speaking of zēlos, orgē, thumos, misos? How did Chrysostom’s public react to his discourses? My hypothesis  is that his sermons witness an emotional divide between John and his public, as well as a certain resistance by the audience to accept Chrysostom’s instructions. The emotional regime he wants his public to abide to, does not coincide with the emotions the public actually feels. In other words, the emotional community imagined by Chrysostom diverges from the emotional community he addresses.

Peter Eardley: From Rhetoric to Affective Knowledge: The Scientific Status of Theology according to Giles of Rome

An important and disputed topic in later medieval thought was the question of whether theology is a science in the sense that Aristotle articulated in the Posterior Analytics. However, as I hope to show, Aristotle's Rhetoric also influenced the debate in important ways, as did the writings of Augustine. My paper will explore Giles of Rome's understanding of whether theology is a science. As the first theologian belonging to the Order of the Hermits of Saint Augustine to hold a chair at Paris in the late thirteenth century, as well as the author of an important commentary on Aristotle's Rhetoric, Giles's understanding of the scope and nature of theology is unique. In particular, I will look at whether there is an evolution in Giles's thought from his characterization of theology as a type of rhetoric in the early Reportatio, to his understanding of theology as a so-called affective science in the slightly later Ordinatio to Book 1 of his commentary on the Sentences and, if so, what is motivating such a change in emphasis.

Marianne Sághy: Monica and the Ascetic Turn

Among its many literary, philosophical and theoretical innovations, Augustine's Confessions has become famous for including the very first biography of a woman: the life of his mother Monica. While Augustine's relations to women as well as his representations of women have been amply scrutinized in recent scholarship, Monica's function in the Confessions remains to be explored. This paper suggests that in Monica's biography Augustine offers a Bildungsroman, sketching the progress of his mother from an ambitiously overwhelming parent into an ascetic philosopher. Monica's is a „parallel life" in the Confessions: instead of a detached registration of the many conversions of his son, she becomes actively engaged in the life-changing transformations promoted by the ascetic revolution. I wish to argue that Monica will be the most perfect, most spiritual product of Augustine's ascetic turn: she will rise to the height of contemplation thanks to her utter estrangement from the world and to her strict rejection of the concerns of the flesh.

Jana Plátová: How many Fragments of the Hypotyposes do we have

The aim of the contribution is to consider the article of Utto Riedinger ('Neue Hypotyposen-Fragmente bei Pseudo-Kaisarius und Isidor von Pelusium', ZNW 51, 1960, 154-196) and to support the hypothesis that the text preserved as Eclogae propheticae is the first part of Clement's lost Hypotyposes, or more precisely the part of the preparatory notes for them.

Anne Karahan: Cyclic Shapes and Divine Activity. A Cappadocian Inquiry into Byzantine Aesthetics

Gregory Nazianzen emphasizes how the deity of the Holy Spirit is shown by his activity as the one who deifies. Gregory refers to the image of 'a truly golden chain of salvation' (Or.31.28). Basil of Caesarea (Hex.2.8) verifies a cosmological interpretation of the 'one day' of creation and utilizes 'the image of eternity'. The succession of days and the change of time signify one circular movement that begins of itself and ends on itself. Gregory of Nyssa (Beat.) separates ontologically the change (τροπή) of everything created from that without change (ἄτρεπτον) reserved for God only. Yet, in In Hexaemeron, Gregory underlines the order (τάξις) and cyclic regularity of the movement of Heaven that imitates God's immobility. The Heaven's ordered change is opposed to the Earth's material change. Good movement/change does not loose itself in the indefinite, but bridges between God and humankind,serves for eternal life. Based on Cappadocian vindications for cyclic divine activity, the paper argues that cyclic shapes in Byzantine aesthetics signify divine activity and immobile order, but also uncircumscription, salvation, resurrection, and return to eternal life. Geometric designs built around cyclic shapes highlight atemporal order and perfected activity, since circles and spheres contain order, tension, but also movement. The cyclic shape of a dome, a nimbus, a medallion, or a tondo has either beginning or end; neither has interacting stylized or elaborated borders in Byzantine sacred narratology.