Brenda Llewellyn Ihssen: 'Waiting to see and know'; Disgust, Fear and Shame in The Miracles of St. Artemios

The sixth-seventh century Constantinopolitan district Oxeia was the epicenter of a healing-cult specializing in diseases of the genitalia. Enclosed in a sarcophagus beneath the altar of the Church of St. John the Forerunner lay the body of St. Artemius, a fourth-century, pro-Arian doux around whose relics gathered predominantly working class, male individuals whose ailments produced an array of responses to and reasons for suffering. As the single body represented the social body and—by extension—the empire, disease, suffering or disfigurement suggest more than singular pain; they reveal theological constructs, attempts to answer for illnesses with theodicy. Disgust for the ailment, fear of infection and shame of the suffering are characteristic in miracle tales, and the response of religion to bodies in pain has been much considered; religious responses to those anxious, ashamed or fearful of pain, contagion, disease or death, less so. Analysis of select passages from the seventh-century Miracles of St. Artemios will consider how the suffering of those stricken with humiliating maladies shapes relationships with their social network, the saint and God through the saint. This paper will employ the new intellectual history theoretical model to initiate conversation about mutable moments in seventh century Byzantium, moments when suffering manifests in isolation or alienation of those who are “waiting to know” if contagion is present and death is looming.

José María Nieva: El sentido místico de la experiencia estética en Dionisio Areopagita

Se ha considerado a Dionisio Areopagita como el más esteta de los pensadores cristianos en cuanto en su afán de expresar la absoluta Trascendencia del Misterio divino no deja de lado el valor de lo sensible como medio manifestativo, expresivo y camino para su encuentro.
Sin embargo, cabe preguntarse qué sentido conceder a lo estético en su pensamiento que  no quede reducido a mera nominación de la belleza, o expresado en otras palabras: ¿puede considerarse la experiencia estética como una experiencia mística?
El presente trabajo intentará responder a tal interrogante al relacionar Sobre la teología mística y Sobre la jerarquía eclesiástica a través de un análisis textual y contextual de la expresión tá mystiká theámata, ya que considera que radica ahí todo el sentido de una experiencia estética que puede comprenderse no sólo como un percibir (aisthanómai) a Dios sino mucho más como experimentar/padecer (pascheîn) su Presencia.

Theodora Panella: Jesus’ Resurrection appearances in 1Cor 15.5-8 and their interpretation in the catenae of Oecumenius, Theophylact and Zygabenus

The compilers of catenae continue a long tradition of hermeneutics. It seems that in the sixth century Oecumenius compiled a catena on the Pauline Epistles, while some centuries later Theophylact of Ochrid and Zygabenus compiled catenae on Pauline Epistles, too. The subject of this paper is the editions of these catenae and more specifically the texts related to the appearances of Jesus after his Resurrection as Paul describes them at 1Cor 15.5-8. The most ancient witness is the one by Paul and contains some totally different elements from those found in Gospels. The aim of this paper is to examine similarities and differences of these catenae as a way of determining whether they are related.

Jane Heath: Clement's Autobiographical Narrative as a Paradigm for Reading the Stromateis

Ever since Eusebius, Stromateis 1.1.11 has been read as the principal primary source for Clement of Alexandria's biography.  This has lent it prominence in discussion of Clement's work, since scholarly interpretation regularly organises meaning through a historical, biographical lens.  But the well-known passage discloses precious little:  vague and allusive, it seems designed to frustrate enquiry, though scholars have often sought to supply the details that Clement hides.  This short communication will argue that his primary purpose in this passage is to develop a paradigm for how readers should engage with the Stromateis by taking the author as their model.  Clement's account of his journey to acquire wisdom, while probably historically accurate, is elusively presented because its intention is symbolic.  Drawing on tropes that were widespread in Greek and Roman literature and partly paralleled in Jewish and Christian discourse, Clement articulates how the reader should travel through the Stromateis both at a literary level (encountering much transmediterranean wisdom but ultimately resting in browsing the apostolic meadow in Egypt) and at a metaliterary level (where the mind travels in quest of understanding, which the whole person puts to use in treading the ‘ways' of wisdom).
This shift in emphasis from author to author-reader relationship affects our reading of the Stromateis as a whole, encouraging greater attentiveness to the pedagogical, theological and historical significance of Clement's use of literary form.

Vincenzo Messana: Massimino ariano e la Sicilia: il dibattito storiografico negli ultimi decenni su una vexata quaestio

Key points of the article: 1. the complex historical context of Sicily, decidedly affected by the Vandal event, by the depredationes of Genseric and by the 440 A. D. siege of Palermo (details from Prosper Aquitanus to Victor Vitensis, from Cassiodorus to Beda, etc.; important information in Novella 9 and, especially, in Novella 1 of Valentinian III); 2. the matter of whether the Sicilian Church was harmed and had suffered in these situations; 3. the peculiar recount by Hydatius of Genseric's siege of Palermo and of the deed of the Arian bishop Maximinus; 4. the animated historiographical debate about the identity of Maximinus Arian and his relation with Sicily, and the different views and hypotheses of scholars in recent decades with regard to specific aspects of the intricate vexata quaestio: from Francesco Giunta to Vito A. Sirago, from Alberto Pincherle to Manlio Simonetti, from Roger Gryson to Luis A. García Moreno, from Mario Mazza to Salvatore Pricoco, from Lellia Cracco Ruggini to Francesco P. Rizzo, etc.

Salvatore Costanza: Il variegato panorama di accezioni dei termini Romanus e barbarus, Christianus e paganus, negli scritti di Salviano

The article belongs to the increasingly promising line of the lexical studies pursuing a historical interpretation of the ancient world and particularly of the late Roman Empire. It explores the kaleidoscopic and varied range of acceptations of the terms Romanus and barbarus, Christianus and paganus, which are diffusely present in the corpus of the historiographer Salvianus, at whom we look with growing interest especially since the last decades of the twentieth century. The more careful grasping than in the past of the meanings and the meaning's nuances, the valences and the peculiarities of such terms, concur to: 1. a more fully understanding of the res that the historiographer of Marseille narrates and also his ideological and mental attitudes that accompany such res; 2. capturing more clearly the historical and social, anthropological and religious horizons of Salvianus; 3. averring more precisely robust continuity of his conception of history, from the Epistulae, through the Ad Ecclesiam, to the De gubernatione Dei.

Lance Jenott: Two Versions of the Letter of Peter to Philip (NHC VIII,2 and CT,1)

An apocryphal Christian epistle entitled The Letter of Peter to Philip has been known since 1945 in a single manuscript from Nag Hammadi Codex VIII. In 2007, sections from another manuscript witness of this Letter became available from Codex Tchacos, and in 2010 even more fragments from this codex were made available in photograph form, which constitute nearly half the text. So far, however, these new fragments have not been transcribed or published. In this presentation, I will present a transcription of the entire text of the Letter of Peter to Philip from Codex Tchacos in synopsis with the text from NHC VIII and examine the history of the text's transmission by discussing variant readings between the two manuscripts.