Last Things

by Bynum, Caroline Walker; Freedman, Paul;

  151. See M. Mar. et lac. 8.7 (ACM, 206); M. Apollon. 37 (ACM, 101).

  152. See Tert. spec. 28.5–29.2 (103).

  153. M. Apollon. 27–28 (ACM, 98).

  154. M. Apollon. 27 (ACM, 98).

  155. M. Pion. 21.9 (ACM, 164).

  156. While by definition the martyr’s death is volitional—an expression of free will—this language is especially strong in Or. mart. 22 (GCS 1, 19–20).

  157. By sheer force of will, martyrs are able to convert pain into pleasure, defeat into triumph, humiliation into honor; see, e.g., M. Lyon. 24 (ACM, 68): for torture/cure; M. Mar. et lac. 3.2 (ACM, 196): for penalty/glory; Tert. adv. Marc. 5.20 (CCL 1, 725): for humiliation/glory; Tert. mart. 2.4 (CCL 1, 4): for prison/safety; Tert. patient. 3.9 (CCL 1, 301): for suffering/joy.

  158. Tert. mart. 2.10 (CCL 2, 5). Soul and body are both strongly connected because physical suffering affects the soul. But soul and body are also separated. The body is a house, temple, temporary lodging for the soul; and if it collapses, the soul leaves; see Tert. anim. 38.5 (CCL 2, 842). Death was the separation of soul from the body; Tert. anim. 51.1 (CCL 2, 857).

  159. Cypr. ep. 58.5.2 (CCL 3C, 326).

  160. M. Perp. 8 (ACM, 129): “in extasi fuerat.”

  161. M. Perp. 15.6 (ACM, 122 and 124).

  162. Polycarp’s countenance filled with grace at his confession, M. Polyc. 12.1 (ACM, 11). Pionius was “radiant,” Pion. 4.2 (ACM, 138); “glowing red,” Pion. 10.2 (ACM, 148) and 22.4 (ACM, 165). The association of light with divinity seems to be cross-cultural; see Jean Pierre Vernant, “Dim Body, Dazzling Body,” in Fragments for a History of the Human Body, ed. Michel Feher, Ramona Naddaff, and Nadia Tazi (New York: Zone Books, 1989). Vernant mentions the association of grace with divinity and fire. I suspect a deeper chain of associations: sun-light-life-fire-divinity-grace-goodness. Such divine associations would be balanced by those of the devil and the underworld: darkness-death-evil. Here the conflagration, fire, can be regenerative through destruction; see Carl-Marin Edsman, Ignis Divinus, Skrifter Utgivna an Vetenskaps-Societeten 34 (Lund: G. W. F. Gleerup, 1949). While Stoics held such beliefs on a cosmic scale, an analogy exists in the fire of purgatory, which purifies, cleanses, and renews the Christian.

  163. M. Mont. et Luc. 21.8 (ACM, 234).

  164. M. Mar. et Iac. 9.2 (ACM, 206).

  165. M. Mar. et Iac. 3 (ACM, 198): “Christus micante gratia de proxima passione fulgebat.”

  166. M. Fruct. 4.3 (ACM, 181).

  167. M. Perp. 21.10 (ACM, 131).

  168. M. Carp. 35 (ACM, 26).

  169. M. Lyon. 20 (ACM, 68). Note also that Blandina simply would not die despite the scourges, the beasts, and the hot griddle; M. Lyon. 55–56 (ACM, 78).

  170. M. Pion. 21.2 (ACM, 162).

  171. M. Lyon. 23–24 (ACM, 68).

  172. M. Poly. 15.2 (ACM, 15).

  173. Mar. et lac. 6.9 (ACM, 200).

  174. M. Lyon. 57.1 (ACM, 82 and 84).

  175. M. Polyc. 18 (ACM, 17).

  176. M. Cypr. 5 (ACM, 175).

  177. M. Fruct. 6.3 (ACM, 182 and 184).

  178. Such is the gist of moral essays, particularly those of Tertullian and Cyprian. Tert. orat. 4.3 (CCL 1, 260) for suffer unto death; Tert. patient. 7.9 (CCL 1, 307) for endure loss, [endure loss]; Tert. patient. 14.5–7 (CCL 1, 315) [Job]; Cypr. patient. 5 (CCL 3A, 120–21) [be perfect and like God: imitate his patience]; Cypr. domin.orat. 15 (CCL 3A, 99) [humility and constancy].

  179. M. Mar. et Iac. 12.4 (ACM, 210): “nullaé tamen aciem liberae mentis clausere tenebrae.”

  180. M. Perp. 4.3–5 (ACM, 110).

  181. M. Perp. 10.1–5 (ACM, 116 and 118).

  182. M. Poly. 5.2 (ACM, 6).

  183. M. Polyc. 7.3 (ACM, 6).

  184. M. Mar. et lac. 12.7 (ACM, 211).

  185. M. Mont. 7 (ACM, 218).

  186. M. Pota. et Bas. 6 (ACM, 134).

  187. M. Mar. et lac. 11.3 (ACM, 208).

  188. Mont, et Luc. 21.8 (ACM, 234).

  189. M. Mar. et lac. 6.10–14 (ACM, 202); M. Mont. 11.3 (ACM, 222).

  190. M. Poly. 22.2 (ACM, 18).

  191. On heaven, see Jeffrey Burton Russell, A History of Heaven: The Singing Silence (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997); Jacquiline Amat, Songes et visions: l’au-delà dans la littérature latin tardive (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1985); Nancy Gauthier, “Les images de l’au-delà durant l’antiquité chrétienne,” Revue des Etudes Augustiennes 33 (1987): 3–22, who cites Alfons M. Schneider, Refrigerium. I, Nach literarischen Quellen und Inschriften (diss. Freiburg im Breisgau, 1928) as important. See also Alfred Stuiber, Refrigerium interim, die Vorstellungen vom Zwischenzustand und die frühchristliche Grabeskunst (Bonn: P. Hanstein, 1957); Claude Carozzi, Le voyage de l’àme dans l’au-delà, d’après la littérature latine, Ve–XIIIe siècle (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 1994); Malcom Davies, “Description by Negation: History of a Thought Pattern in Ancient Accounts of Blissful Life,” Prometheus 13 (1987): 265–84; Aaron Gurevich, “Per un’antropologia delle visioni ultraterrene nella cultura occidentale del medioevo” in La semiotica nei paesi slavi: programmi, problemi, analisi, ed. Carlo Prevignano (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1979), 443–63; Herbert Schade, “Das Paradies und die ‘Imago Dei,’ ” in Wandlungen des Paradiesischen und Utopischen: Studien zum Bild eines Ideals (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1966), 79–182.

  192. M. Perp. 12.1–7 (ACM, 120).

  193. M. Mont. et Luc. 8.4–7 (ACM, 220).

  194. M. Perp. 9.8–9 (ACM, 118).

  195. M. Mar. et lac. 7.3–5 (ACM, 204).

  196. M. Mar. et lac. 6.1 (ACM, 202).

  197. M. Mont. et Luc. 5 (ACM, 218).

  198. Qur’an, Sutra 55, Mecca 58.

  The Decline of the Empire of God: Amnesty, Penance, and the Afterlife from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages

  1. Jacob of Sarug, On the Penitent Thief, trans. P.S. Landersdorfer, Ausgewählte Schriften der syrischen Dichter, Bibliothek der Kichenvater 60 (Kempten/Munich: J. Kosel, 1912), 363.

  2. Ep. 48.4. 78, Oeuvres de saint Augustin 46B: Lettres 18–298, Bibliothèque Augustinienne (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes 1987), 114; trans. Robert B. Eno, Saint Augustine: Letters VI (18–298), Fathers of the Church 81 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1989), 43.

  3. Augustine, Contra ii epistulas Pelagianorum 3.5.14.

  4. E.g., in the newly discovered sermons of Augustine, discovered at Mainz by François Dolbeau: Sermon Mayence 40/Dolbeau 11.14.284, ed. F. Dolbeau, Revue Bénédictine 102 (1992): 94, in Vingt-six sermons au peuple d’Afrique (Paris: Institut d’Etudes Augustiniennes, 1996), 67.

  5. Augustine, Enchiridion 21.78; Enarrationes in Ps. 37.36 and 80.20.

  6. Augustine, Enchiridion 29.110; see Heikki Kotila, Memoria mortuorum: Commemoration of the Departed in Augustine, Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum 38 (Rome: Augustinianum, 1992), 138–41; and Claude Carozzi, Le voyage de l’àme dans l’au-delà, d’après la littérature latine, Ve–XIIIe siècle, Collection de l’Ecole Française de Rome 189 (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 1994), 22–33; with G. R. Edwards, “Purgatory: ‘Birth’ or ‘Evolution’?” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36 (1985): 634–46.

  7. Eric Rebillard, In hora mortis: évolution de la pastorale chrétienne de la mort aux IVe et Ve siècles, dans l’Occident latin, Bibliothèque de l’Ecole Française d’Athènes et de Rome 283 (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 1994), 214.

  8. Augustine, Enarratio in Ps. 101, serm. 1.10 and Mayence 44/Dolbeau 14.6.120, ed. F. Dolbeau, Revue Bénédictine 103 (1993): 317, in Vingt-six sermons, 111.

  9. Rebillard, In hora mortis, 160–67.

  10. Augustine, Enchiridion 29.110.

  11. E.g., the epitaph of the great Christian senator, Petronius Probus: Ernest Diehl, Inscriptiones Latinae Christianae Veteres no. 63.13–14 (Zurich: Weidmann, 1970), 1: 18–19.

  12. Athanas Recheis, Engel, Tod und Seelenreise (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1958), 169–84.

  13. Sulpicius Severu
s, Ep. 3.16: see A. C. Rush, “An Echo of Classical Antiquity in Saint Gregory the Great: Death as a Struggle with the Devil,” Traditio 3 (1945): 369–80.

  14. Gregory of Tours, De virtutibus sancti Martini 1.4, ed. B. Krusch, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 1.2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1885), 140, trans. in Raymond Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), 206.

  15. Carozzi, Voyage de l’âme, 99–253. The texts are collected in M. P. Ciccarese, Visioni dell’ Aldilà in Occidente (Florence: Nardini, 1989).

  16. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Social Anthropology (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), 179.

  17. Rebillard, In hora mortis, 11–124.

  18. Frederick S. Paxton, Christianizing Death: The Creation of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990), 6; and P. A. Février, “La mort chrétienne,” in Segni e riti nella chiesa altomedievale occidentale, Settimane di Studio sull’Alto Medio Evo 33 (Spoleto: Centro di Studi sull’Alto Medio Evo, 1987), 2: 881–942, at pp. 891, 915–19.

  19. Carozzi, Voyage de l’âme, 23; 22–33, 296, and 640.

  20. See esp. Carl-Martin Edsman, Le baptême de feu, Uppsala Universitet Nytes-tamentliga Seminar: Acta 9 (Uppsala: Almquist and Wiksells, 1940), 3–12.

  21. Clement of Alexandria, Eclogae propheticae 25.4 and Stromateis 7.6; Origen, Hom.3 in Ps.36 1. See Henri Crouzel, “L’exégèse origénienne de 1 Cor. 3:11–15 et la purification eschatologique,” Epektasis: mélanges patristiques offerts au cardinal Jean Daniélou, ed. Jacques Fontaine and Charles Kannengiesser (Paris: Beauchesne, 1972), 273–83; W. C. van Unnik, “The ‘Wise Fire’ in a Gnostic Eschatological Vision,” Kyriakon: Festschrift Johannes Quasten, ed. Patrick Granfield and Josef A. Jungmann (Münster: Aschendorff, 1970), 1:277–88; C. Carozzi, Eschatologie et au-delà: recherches sur l’Apocalypse de Paul (Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence, 1994), 71–76.

  22. Pierre Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique (Paris: Etudes Augus-tiniennes, 1982), trans. and ed. A. I. Davidson, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 81–125; Michel Foucault, Le souci de soi (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), trans. The Care of the Self (New York: Random House, 1986); see also P. Hadot, “Réflexions sur l’idée du ‘souci de soi,’ ” in Michel Foucault philosophe (Paris: Le Seuil, 1989), 261–68, also in Philosophy as a Way of Life, 206–13.

  23. Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 62–69; P. Hadot, La citadelle intérieure: introduction aux Pensées de Marc Aurele (Paris: Fayard, 1992), 324.

  24. E.g., Ignaz Ziegler, Die Konigsgleichnisse des Midrasch beleuchtet durch die romische Kaiserzeit (Breslau: Schottlaender, 1903); N. Johansson, Parakletoi (Lund: Ohlsson, 1940).

  25. Brown, Power and Persuasion, 55, 69.

  26. The Gelasian Sacramentary 3.6, ed. H. A. Wilson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894), 227.

  27. Reprinted as Proper 21 (Collects: Traditional), Book of Common Prayer . . . of the Episcopal Church (Evanston, Ill.: Seabury Press, 1977), 281.

  28. Sacramentary of Gellone 2895, ed. A. Dumas, Corpus Christianorum, Series latina 159 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1981), 462; V. D. Sicard, La liturgie de la mort dans l’église latine des origines à la réforme carolingienne, Liturgiewissenschaftliche Quellen und Forschungen 63 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1978), 261–345; Paxton, Christianizing Death, 62, 116–19.

  29. Sicard, La liturgie de la mort, 399.

  30. Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 62–68, and Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianization of the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 73–74.

  31. Augustine, De civitate Dei 21.18.1, ed. B. Dombart and A. Kalb, Corpus Christianorum 48 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955), 784.

  32. Augustine, De civitate Dei 18.9–11, p. 784.

  33. Augustine, De civitate Dei 21.19–23, 21.21.13–20, pp. 785–789, 786.

  34. Prudentius, Cathemerinon 5.125–36, ed. H. J. Thomson, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), 1: 46.

  35. Codex Theodosianus 9.38.3.

  36. Codex Theodosianus 9.3.7.

  37. Carozzi, Eschatologie et au-delà, 127–51.

  38. Gregory of Tours, De virtutibus sancti Martini 2.60, p. 180; trans. Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 259.

  39. Gregory of Tours, Liber historiarum 4.21.

  40. Gregory of Tours, Liber historiarum 5.14.

  41. Gregory of Tours, Liber historiarum 9.8.

  42. Gregory of Tours, De virtutibus sancti Martini 2.17, p. 164; trans. Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 236.

  43. Gregory of Tours, Liber historiarum 1, praef.: qui adpropinquantem finem mundi disperant. The reader should know that my interpretation of this phrase differs from the communis opinio. Lewis Thorpe, Gregory of Tours: The History of the Franks (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), 67, translates the phrase as: “who are losing hope as they see the end of the world coming nearer.” I would translate it as: “who do not expect the end of the world to come.” Disperare can mean “not expect, lose hope of”; cf. Liber historiarum 4.12, citing Sidonius Apollinaris, Letter 2.1: nec accipiebat instrumenta desperans, trans. O. M. Dalton, The Letters of Sidonius (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1915), 1: 35: “nor does he trouble to furnish himself with deeds, knowing it hopeless to prove a title.” For the alternative adopted by most scholars, see Bruno Krusch, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum merovingicarum 1.1 (Hanover: Hahn, 1951), 142, n. 2. See also Sortes Sangallenses 33, R.8: Habebis spem fidei, sed de disperato, in Alban Dold, Die Orakelsprüche im St. Galler Palimpsesteodex 908, Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften: Sitzungsberichte 225: 4 (1948): 24, with note on p. 110: “from someone you do not expect.” See A. H. B. Breukelaar, Historiography and Episcopal Authority in Sixth-Century Gaul: The Histories of Gregory of Tours Interpreted in Historical Context, Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte 57 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1994): 300 and n. 23; and on Gregory’s attitude to the approaching end of time, see pp. 52–55 and 169–74, with M. Heinzelmann, Gregor von Tours (538–594). “Zehn Bücher der Geschichte.”: Historiographie und Gesellschaftskonzept im 6. Jht. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1994), 69–101; both accept the conventional translation. By contrast to the insouciance castigated by Gregory, expectation of the coming end of the world was the attitude expected of religiously minded persons: e.g. the formula for a legacy to a pious foundation; see Marculf, Formulae 2.3, ed. A. Uddholm (Uppsala: Eranos, 1962): 178.

  44. Carozzi, Voyage de l’âme, 99–138, with an edition of the Visio Fursei on pp. 679–92; Ciccarese, Visioni, 190–224.

  45. Visio Fursei 9; Ciccarese, Visioni, 204; and Carozzi, Voyage de l’âme, 684.

  46. R. Chapman Stacey, The Road to Judgment: From Custom to Court in Medieval Ireland and Wales (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1994), 111. See also N. B. Aitchison, “Kingship, Society, and Sacrality: Rank, Power, and Ideology in Early Medieval Ireland,” Traditio 49 (1994): 45–75.

  47. N. Patterson, Cattle Lords and Clansmen: The Social Structure of Early Ireland (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 1994), 328–29.

  48. Patterson, Cattle Lords, 348.

  49. Visio Fursei 2–3, Ciccarese, Visioni, 194–96, and Carozzi, Voyage de l’âme, 679.

  50. E.g., Leontius of Neapolis, Life of John the Almsgiver 27 and 44, trans. in Elizabeth Dawes and Norman H. Baynes, Three Byzantine Saints (Oxford: Blackwell, 1948), 239 and 255, and the material in Glenn Pears, “Approaching the Archangel Michael,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 20 (1996): 100–121.

  51. Anastasius of Sinai, Oratio in Ps. 6, Patrologia Graeca 89: 1141C, records the story of the death of a brigand chief; see also C. Farkas, “Räuberbehörde in Thrakien,” Byzantini
sche Zeitschrift 86/87 (1993/1994): 462–70.

  52. Visio Fursei 6, Ciccarese, Visioni, 198 and Carrozzi, Voyage de l’âme, 681.

  53. Visio Fursei 7 and 9, Ciccarese, Visioni, 200, 204; Carozzi, Voyage de l’âme, 682, 684.

  54. Visio Fursei 7, 9, Ciccarese, Visioni, 200, 204; Carozzi, Voyage de l’âme, 682, 684.

  55. Visio Fursei 8, Ciccarese, Visioni, 202; Carozzi, Voyage de l’âme, 683. See Carozzi, Voyage de l’âme, 133–37, on the purificatory associations of fire in Celtic and northern folklore.

  56. Vita Geretrudis 7, ed. B. Krusch, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum merovingicarum 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1888): 462–63.

  57. See esp. Carozzi, Voyage de l’âme, 112–20.

  58. Jo Ann McNamara, “The Ordeal of Community: Hagiography and Discipline in Merovingian Convents,” Vox Benedictina 2 (1986): 293–326.

  59. [Waldebert], Regula cuiusdam patris ad virgines 5, Patrologia latina 88: 1059 D-1060 A.

  60. Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani 2.11, ed. B. Krusch, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 4 (Hanover: Hahn, 1902), 130; trans. in Jo Ann McNamara and John E. Hallborg, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1992), 162–63.

  61. Friedrich Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft 5 (358), Kroners Taschenbuch 74 (Stuttgart: Kroner, 1956), 268.

  62. [Waldebert], Regula cuiusdam patris 7: 1060B; G. Muschiol, Famula Dei. Zur Liturgie in merovingischen Frauenklöstern, Beiträge zur Geschichte des alten Mônchtums und des Benediktinertums 41 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1994): 222–63.

  63. Jonas, Vita Columbani 2.12, p. 132, trans. McNamara and Hallborg, 164.

  64. Carozzi, Voyage de l’âme, 142–44; see now Yitzak Hen, “The Structure and Aim of the Visio Baronti,” Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 47 (1996): 477–97, esp. 493–97.