Download PDF | Paul J. Alexander - The Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition-Univ of California Pr (1985).
253 Pages
Introduction by Dorothy deF. Abrahamse
Throughout Christian history, apocalyptic visions of the approaching end of time have provided a persistent and enigmatic theme for history and prophecy. The world of early Christianity and late Judaism, as recent scholars have emphasized, was permeated with the expectation of an imminent Messianic drama; the Old and New Testaments, as well as numerous extra-canonical works, testify to the pervasive belief that God was about to end the known political order.' Through prophetic visions the believer might be prepared to recognize the signs of the impending eschatological drama in wars, famines, invasions, and other extraordinary political events. And although the immediacy of Messianic expectation receded, it left its mark in a tradition of prophetic writing that has surfaced again and again in times of tension and adversity.
By medieval times the belief in an imminent apocalypse had officially been relegated to the role of symbolic theory by the Church; as early as the fourth century, Augustine had declared that the Revelation of John was to be interpreted symbolically rather than literally, and for most of the Middle Ages Church councils and theologians considered only abstract eschatology to be acceptable speculation.’ Since the nineteenth century, however, historians have recognized that literal apocalypses did continue to circulate in the medieval world and that they played a fundamental role in the creation of important strains of thought and leg-end.
German historians discovered in apocalyptic literature the source for legends of the Antichrist, Gog and Magog, and (of particular interest for their times) the legend of a Roman Empire that would last to the end of time.’ More recently, scholars have seen in chiliasm the impetus for popular religious and political movements of the Middle Ages, and the existence of a strain of prophetic thought in the works of Joachim of Fiore and his circle has received new understanding and appreciation.* There can now be no doubt of the continuing importance of the eschatological tradition in medieval life and thought.
One important contribution of early studies of the legends of the Last Roman Emperor was the discovery that the idea was neither developed from general oral tradition nor taken directly from biblical themes, but came to the West from pseudonymous prophecies circulating in the Byzantine world. As early as 1877, Gerhard von Zezschwitz announced that the earliest Western treatise on the end of time containing the figure of the Last Roman Emperor (the tenth-century Burgundian abbot Adso’s Libellus de ortu et tempore Antichristt) was based on a Byzantine apocalypse.
In a continuing debate over the contemporary significance of medieval emperor legends, other scholars at the end of the last century established the outlines of a medieval apocalyptic literary genre derived from ancient texts and lasting to the late Middle Ages, with versions surviving in many of the languages of Christendom. From the editions produced by German and Russian scholars it became clear that a body of Byzantine prophetic literature, created and revised within the confines of a strict form, had served as a continual bridge between ancient eschatology and the medieval Western world.°
The basis of the tradition, as shown in the important studies of Ernst Sackur, Wilhelm Bousset, and V. M. Istrin, was a group of prophecies written pseudonymously in the name of Church Fathers or biblical fig-ures, copied and reedited time and again to respond to the urgency of new historical circumstances. Long before the tenth century, the form had developed distinctive themes and characters. Divided into sections of “historical” and “prophetic” events, its composition was marked by the author’s use of the technique of vaticinium ex eventu—an historical event turned into prophecy. An apocalypse thus typically began with a series of historical facts (the reigns of emperors, dynastic alliances, wars) put into the mouth of a prophet, and continued more vaguely to announce eschatological events at the end of time. The transition from history to prophecy is frequently transparent, and can serve as a guide to the time and place of composition.
In the early Middle Ages, prophetic works circulated in several successive guises. Sackur established that a medieval Latin prophecy attributed to the Tiburtine Sibyl was an interpolation of a late Roman text, composed as a Christian formulation of the pagan Sibylline oracle.’ In 1967, Professor Alexander published an edition of a Greek version of the Tiburtine Sibyl whose composition he was able to place in the reign of Anastasius in the region of Heliopolis-Baalbek in Syria. He proposed that both texts derived from a lost Greek original of the late fourth century; these (and presumably other) versions must have been popular in the empire between the fifth and seventh centuries."
In the seventh century, Sibylline prophecies were eclipsed by a new apocalyptic composition attributed to one Bishop Methodius of Patara in Lycia. Greek and Latin texts of this prophecy were published by Istrin and Sackur, who recognized its importance as a new composition which was to dominate the genre throughout the early Middle Ages, but were unable to agree on its origin."' In 1931 a Hungarian Orientalist, Michael Kmosko, argued that the work was originally composed in Syriac, and that a manuscript in the Vatican (Cod. Vat. Syr. 58) represented the earliest text of the work." Sometime in the ninth century the litera-ture underwent another, less dramatic change, and abbreviated and interpolated versions of Pseudo-Methodius appeared as Visions of Daniel. It was in this form that the apocalypse must have reached Adso in tenthcentury Burgundy."
Surviving manuscripts of these works testify to a continuous and copious tradition of prophecy, but extant texts do not tell the whole story. Apocalypses were often summarized and incorporated into other sources for various reasons, sometimes in enough detail to provide clear evidence for the development of prophetic themes and ideas. Thus, the tenth-century emissary Liudprand of Cremona’s account of his stay in Constantinople includes a detailed discussion of prophetic books shown to him by a Byzantine circle, and among the “edifying subjects” discussed in an encyclopedic saint’s life, the Life of St. Andrew the Fool, was the approach of the end of time." Finally, disparate writings which have survived as attributions to early authors appear to be pastiches of other pieces of prophecy; for this reason they have been difficult to date or use.
The sum of this evidence is a body of material of crucial importance in the creation and transmission of eschatological ideas for later ages. The figure of the Antichrist, which was to play such an important role in later Western speculation, was already present in the Revelation of John, but in these Byzantine prophecies he acquired an elaborate history and personality. Moreover, his appearance had come to be preceded by a detailed drama peopled by new characters: wars and invasions, in the Byzantine tradition, were to be brought to an end by the rise of a Last Roman Emperor, who would arise from sleep to defeat enemies and initiate an era of peace and rejoicing. In his time, however, the “unclean nations” of Gog and Magog, imprisoned by Alexander the Great behind the Gates of the North, would be loosed to commit abominations on the Christians.
Then the Antichrist would be revealed: the Last Emperor would return to Jerusalem to lay his crown on Golgotha, return the empire to God, and so set the stage for the rule of the Antichrist and the return of Christ.’ The significance of these themes for later Western history has been a subject of such interest that it is surprising to discover that their origins and development in Byzantine literature remain obscure. Where did the vision of a Roman Empire lasting to the end of time, and a Last Roman Emperor who would lay down his crown on Golgotha, come from? How were the nations of Gog and Magog, known in biblical tradition, united with the Alexander legend?
How did Byzantine legend develop details of the career of Antichrist— his life history, association with the Jews, ability to change shape, and conflict with Enoch and Elijah, “Sons of Thunder” and “last comforters of mankind”? The explanation for these and the many other puzzling features of the apocalyptic tradition in the East clearly depends on a thorough understanding of the Byzantine textual tradition, its sources, and the way it was transmitted to the West, but in spite of new manuscript discoveries and important advances in all areas of Byzantine studies, prophecy has received no comprehensive treatment since the days of Sackur and Istrin. Thus, the appearance of a new study of Byzantine apocalypses promised to be of major importance for Byzantinists and Western medievalists alike.
For more than fifteen years prior to his death in 1977, Paul Alexander devoted his energies to the elucidation of the origins, development, and diffusion of Byzantine apocalypses between the fourth and eleventh centuries. His work resulted in the publication of numerous preliminary studies on individual texts and their historical significance.’” Unfortunately, he was not able to complete the major monograph to which they pointed. Many sections of the work had been drafted, and although the author certainly intended to revise them into a unified text, the studies even as they stand represent important contributions to the clarification of an exceptionally difficult tradition. From the outline and preliminary reports completed by Professor Alexander, it is evident that he had intended to divide his work into three sections, tentatively entitled Principal Texts, Events, and Themes. The first portion, on the principal texts, had been completed in draft form. Studies of three ideas had been drafted for the third part: the Last Roman Emperor, Gog and Magog, and the Antichrist. Here, although the author had carried out an analysis of textual similarities and thematic development of the tradition, the treatment of origins remained uncompleted.
Professor Alexander’s ideas on the relationship between the Byzantine apocalyptic tradition and Late Jewish eschatology were still developing; he showed in the section on the Last Roman Emperor included here, as well as in an article which appeared only after his death, how much the theme and description had grown out of Jewish apocalyptic material." In the sections on the Antichrist and Gog and Magog, the question of extra-canonical sources had not yet been fully treated, and it seems clear that the author intended to extend his work in the light of these relationships. The studies as they stand, however, offer an extensive and valuable treatment of the thematic development and variations on apocalyptic ideas through six centuries of Byzantine eschatology.
The final part of the work—the analysis of the historical evidence of Byzantine prophecies—remained unwritten at Professor Alexander’s death. In two important articles he had demonstrated the possibilities of the material through a study of the evidence of one of the richest of these works—the Slavonic Daniel and its interpolations—for the Arab invasions of Sicily and an eleventh-century Bulgarian rebellion.'* He had also described the careful methodology that must be applied to apocalyptic texts before they can be used as historical evidence." Here, particularly, we must regret that the project could not be carried to completion, for the exposition of the connection between ideas and historical events was one of the most characteristic and profound features of all of Paul Alexander’s work.
One of the author’s most important contributions to the clarification of the Byzantine apocalyptic tradition was the establishment of the priority of the Syriac Pseudo-Methodius, as suggested by Kmosko, as the source of the composition, and the explication of its date and provenance. The Syriac text of this work is contained in a single manuscript of the sixteenth century; as a part of the study, Professor Alexander had prepared a transcription of the text and a translation. Because of the unavailability of the text, his translation is included here as an appendix to the study of the Syriac Pseudo-Methodius in Chapter ]; it is hoped that the text and translation may eventually be published together.
All of the textual studies presented here are united by a methodology described by the author in his paper on “Medieval Apocalypses as Historical Sources.” *” Using a combination of historical and philological detection, Professor Alexander attempted to establish the time, place, and circumstances of composition for each of the major surviving texts. In spite of the problems posed by sources that habitually changed names and dates, deliberately obscured identities, and required revision each time they were copied, these textual studies offer evidence of a surprisingly detailed tradition, which will be outlined here.
The author proposes that the Syriac Pseudo-Methodius, which should be considered the starting point of medieval prophecy, was the product of a mid-seventh-century cleric in the region of Singara in northern Mesopotamia, whose writing reflects the immediate impact of the Arab invasions. The work argued that the Byzantine Empire, rather than Ethiopia as “some” thought, would be the eschatological savior for the captive Christians. Sometime before 800, the First Greek Redaction was produced by a cleric who substituted Greek texts for the biblical quotations from the Syriac PeSitta, omitted or deemphasized features of Syrian topography, and removed unflattering references to the clergy. More specific circumstances can be derived from the next version, the Visions of Daniel, in which the prophetic sections of Pseudo-Methodius were expanded to reflect the eschatological significance of later invasions.
The Slavonic Daniel is shown to be a translation from a Greek original, probably composed in Sicily between 821 and 829; a second text, identified here as Pseudo-Chrysostom, is proposed as a response to an Arab attack on Attalia in Pamphylia in 842. Finally, the author argues that a third version, called here Daniel Kat éo7at, is an apologetic for Basil I, described as the “New Phinehas” soon after his murder of Michael IIL. This last version was composed of fragments of eighth- and ninth-century prophecies written in Italy and Sicily. Two other texts—Pseudo-Ephraem and the Cento ( Oracles of Leo the Wise)—are pastiches of existing works whose composition is of uncertain date.
Finally, these studies examine three tenth-century reports of apocalyptic texts. Liudprand of Cremona’s arguments with Byzantine scholars over the meaning of their prophetic books have long been favorite exempla for the misunderstanding of East and West. But, Professor Alexander proposes here, Liudprand’s description is circumstantial enough that two separate apocalypses can be identified. The first, called a Vision of Daniel in the text, was an Eastern prophecy that must have been compiled in the reign of Nicephorus Phocas (963—968). Liudprand recounts in more detail the contents of a second oracle, which he ascribes to “Hippolytus, bishop of Sicily,” and which predicted that a Western, rather than Byzantine, ruler would fulfill the apocalyptic role of Last Emperor. In this chapter, the author suggests that a Latin translation of Pseudo-Hippolytus was the source of Adso’s eschatological comfort for the Western emperors in a year close to 954.
The oracle, in that case, must have been written in Italy. The most likely candidate for the promised emperor, Professor Alexander believes, is the Frankish emperor Louis II (840-875), who led a counteroffensive against the Moslems in southern Italy between 855 and 871 and planned a largescale liberation of Sicily. The Byzantine adherents of this literature were almost certainly a circle of opponents of the usurper Nicephorus Phocas.
The last of the texts analyzed here is a section of the tenth-century Life of St. Andrew the Fool, which the author characterizes as part of an encyclopedic work of edification. Although the prophetic portion of, the vita has many unusual features, its most striking characteristic is the author’s deliberate historicism, as he attempted to create a work set in the fifth-century reign of the emperor Leo I.
Even without the synthesis Professor Alexander would have included, a richly detailed tradition emerges from these studies. Byzantine apocalypses were indeed written for consolation in times of trouble, and they reflected the hopes and despairs of contemporaries in very concrete historical events.”' The localization of these texts shows how often apocalyptic hopes arose in the fringes of Byzantine society, where the threats of invasion were greatest, and in response to events whose importance has long since receded out of historical memory. As they were transmitted from one portion of the empire to another, and translated from language to language, themes developed in response to immediate concerns and localities or out of a simple misunderstanding of the text. With all its unlikely sources, however, perhaps the main impression of the Byzantine apocalyptic tradition, as it is uncovered by the author, is the extent to which it remained a concrete and creative source for the expression of political and religious thought throughout the early medieval world.
It has seemed important to the editor to make Professor Alexander’s research available in a form as unaltered from the original as possible. Thus, his work is published here as The Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition with little editorial comment. Where new editions have appeared, or where important works were later noted by the author, additions to his footnotes have been included in brackets. In one or two instances Professor Alexander had changed his mind on the details of some arguments. Here I have noted his explanation for the change and the implications for the subsequent argument in the footnotes.
The editor and Mrs. Alexander gratefully acknowledge the support that enabled Professor Alexander to devote substantial periods of time to his research. In 1970-1971 and again in 1974—1975, while on sabbatical leave, he received fellowship grants from the Humanities Research Committee of the University of California, Berkeley. In 1970-1971 he enjoyed the hospitality of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton. In 1974-1975 he was awarded a Senior Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
I would like to thank Leif Eric Trondsen of California State University, Long Beach, Peter Brown of the University of California and John Hayes of UCLA for assistance with the Greek and Syriac texts. My debt to Jane-Ellen Long and Paul Psoinos of the University of California Press goes beyond the customary acknowledgments to an author’s editors. This book could not have been finished without the help of Paul Alexander’s former students and colleagues at Berkeley. | am particularly grateful to Michael Maas, now of Dartmouth, for his advice on the initial organization of the manuscript, and to Barbara and Robert Rodgers, now at the University of Vermont, who retyped much of the manuscript and transcribed the Syriac references. Above all, it was the advice and encouragement of Robert Brentano and Thomas Bisson of the History Department of the University of California at Berkeley that made the completion of this project possible, and | would like to express my thanks to them here.
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