Pseudo-Methodius, Apocalypse and Anonymous, An Alexandrian World Chronicle

 

Τῷ δὲ πεντακοσιοστῷ χπὸνῷ τῆς δεθτὲρας χιλιὰδος `έτι μείζὁνος ἐξεκαὐθησαν ὲπὶ τῇ ἀθἐσμῷ  πορνεἰὰ πάντες οἰ άνθρωποι έω τῇ παρεμβολή Κάϊν τῆς προτέρας χείρονες γενόμενοι γενεάς, οἵ  και δικήν αλόγων ζώων αλλήλοις ἐπἐβαινον, ἐπί μέν τοὺς ἅρρενας τό θῆλυ, ἔπὶ δἐ θῆλυ τὀ ἅρρεν. (p.7)

Anno autem D secundi miliarii adhuc etiam mails exarserunt in obscinissimam fornicationem omnes homines in vastris Cain, peius factie priori generationis.  Qui et in more animalium in alterutrum convenientes insurgebant, et quidem in virilem muliebrem sexum <...>.  Similiter isdem turpissimis et incestis actibus hi, qui grant de cognation Cain, utebantur. (p. 80, 82)

For almost as long as Christianity has existed, visions of the end, eschaton, have been proclaimed.  These purported "unveilings" (which is what the word Apocalypse approximately means), have taken many forms.  For tens of millions today (such as the majority of my family, if not quite myself), the Apocalypse begins with a Rapture, or taking up of the faithful to meet Jesus before the seven years of the Great Tribulation begin (for billions of others who profess the Christian faith, this belief, originating in the 19th century, is a pre-millenist heresy).

And despite the disparate beliefs of the eschaton, the notion of the End has had a certain lurid appeal.  Of the earlier post-Revelations apocalyptic books, the seventh century CE book by Pseudo-Methodius (it was a custom in antiquity and the early centuries that followed the collapse of the western provinces of the Roman Empire for authors to take famous religious names as their own, with the hopes of the saintly names lending gravity to their writings) is perhaps one of the first multilingual eschatological bestsellers.  Apocalypse was originally written in Greek sometime around the year 692, based on textual evidence.  It was composed in the aftermath of three generations of calamities for the remnant Roman Empire.  From 632-697, province after province in the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa were lost to the advancing armies emerging out of the Arabian peninsula who proclaimed the new faith of Islam.  To many, it was as if the world were on the cusp of collapsing.

By this time, the eastern Empire was thoroughly Christian, if not quite united in beliefs.  The Empire had changed in the previous four centuries from being the cruel persecutor of Christianity to the stalwart defender of the faith.  For many, Christianity had become co-terminus with imperium.  This belief is very prominent throughout Apocalypse, making for imagery that may be puzzling to those modern believers in the eschaton who see the Roman Empire as the harbinger of a worldy, materialistic anti-Christian entity that would emerge to tattoo people with the Sign of the Beast or other such modern imagery.

Pseudo-Methodius's Apocalypse begins with a chronologistic approach, beginning with a history of the world and its sins.  I have quoted above a passage from the second chapter dealing with the progeny of Cain.  I purposely didn't give the translation because it might be more fun for those who do know either Greek or Latin what the author is condemning (and to convince others to use Google Translate to find out what is perversely amusing about that short passage).  In these chapters, in which Old Testament figures and populations are interwoven with the then-current age, there are scourges (such as the 7th century Arabs) who emerge to represent God's wrath over the sins of the world.  Over the course of 14 short chapters (the whole is perhaps 40 pages in English translation), the author presents the case for why contemporary evils were transpiring, before presenting a vision in which a future saintly Roman Emperor would emerge to reclaim the lost lands before relinquishing his authority (and life) in Jerusalem as Jesus descends from Heaven with the Saints.  The imperium of the Romans, transformed into a sort of quasi-dyad with orthodox Christianity, has yielded to its holy successor, the imperium of Christ.

Apocalypse is a fascinating read, as its representations of sinful deeds and the coming triumph of Christ is presented in vivid prose.  It is easy to understand how in a world in which the western Empire had collapsed and new scourges (e.g. the nomadic invasions of the 5th-11th centuries) had emerged that this work was quickly translated into Latin and disseminated throughout the former Roman provinces.  While its presentation may seem quaint today, it still is a key historical work of apocalyptic literature that is well worth the time for anyone interested in the historiography of eschatology to read.

In the Dumbarton Oaks edition that I read, there is a companion work, the anonymous An Alexandrian World Chronicle, that was presented in Latin to the Frankish court by eastern Roman diplomats in the mid-6th century CE.  It is one of the earliest examples of the Christian chronicles of the world.  Divided into two volumes, it presents the world from the entrance of sin until contemporary times.  While there is a strong religious element to it, this work contains lists (a veritable plethora of lists) of rulers from the pharaohs to the Roman emperors, with purported times of their reigns and any notable events during their reigns.  In isolation, this work can be rather tedious at times to read, but taken piecemeal, it does provide an early look at the general layout used by latter world/national chronicles to cover the history of (and reason for) various political entities.

Together, these two works, Apocalypse and An Alexandrian World Chronicle, demonstrate how the 5th century nomadic invasions did not quite sever completely the Latin and Greek-speaking Mediterranean cultures.  The historical value of these two works is immense, even if the writing quality of the second work might not be as appealing to modern readers.

Marco Girolamo Vida, Christiad

 

Regardless of one’s individual beliefs regarding one of the central tenets of Christianity, the execution via crucifixion of Jesus, the Christ, is certainly a story worthy of an epic.  There were for the much of late antiquity and the medieval period, recastings of the Passion in the form of hymns, tractates, and plays.  Yet it was not until the Italian Renaissance of the 14th-16th centuries that greater efforts were made to synthesize Christianity’s greatest story ever told with Greco-Roman dactylic hexameter epic poetry.  The exemplar of this new effort to recombine elements of Christology with themes, motifs, and narrative structures of the early Roman Empire poetry was Marco Girolamo Vida’s Christiad, first published in full in 1536 in Latin.

The Christiad borrows much from Vergil, not just the structure of poetic devices used in his Aeneid but also from the more bucolic Eclogues.  Comprised of six books, the structure of Christiad depends much less on chronological linearity as it does on the introduction of the eternal theme of struggle between the forces of God and those of Satan.  In reading Vida’s descriptions of the legions of hell, I could not help but to be struck by how influential his depictions of the demonic hordes were on Milton’s Paradise Lost, published nearly a century and a half later.  In particular, the invasion of these demons into the bodies of the leaders of the Sanhedrin is chilling in how well he uses the vitriol of Hell’s host to create a vivid contrast between the nobility of Heaven and the baseness of raging, defiled human (amplified by demonic possession) desire for dominion of vice.

This duality easily could have become too didactic to make for an enjoyable read, but Vida adroitly mixes in epic metaphors that, similar to those of Vergil or Homer in their epics, serve to create brief, beautiful asides that do not distract from narrative momentum as much as underscoring what is truly at stake.  However, there are times that the metaphors clang rather than ring out.  One such occasion was a metaphoric comparison of a mob’s clamor to that of a cannonball bursting through.  While to some degree an apt metaphor, this anachronistic description of an event set in the first century did briefly jar me out of the flow of the narrative.

The characters aren’t as well-defined as one might expect from modern literature.  While Vida mostly avoided the repetitious adjectives that Homer in particular would use to establish his warriors, his secondary characters, with the notable exception of Pontus Pilate (who here appears as much more sympathetic to Christ’s plight than he did in the Gospel accounts), are not very memorable.  Although in part necessary due to his fate as a tragic hero, Vida’s Jesus is described more through the speech of others than by any dialogue.  While this is nothing more than a minor annoyance (because the lines themselves are a pleasure to sound out in Latin), it does justify a brief note.

The narrative flows forwards and backwards in time, from Heaven to Hell to Jerusalem and back, in smooth, cascading rhythms.  Vida does an outstanding job capturing the vibe of Vergil’s works, to the point where his Latin is nearly devoid of linguistic innovations that occurred in Ecclesiastical and Medieval Latin.  His hexameters are very polished, with only rare blips like the one I noted above with the metaphor ringing false.  Reading it “aloud” in scansions makes Vida’s accomplishment all the more praiseworthy.

However, there is a latent “but” in this praise.  Vida takes traditional Greco-Latin poetic themes as far as they can go.  And yet, and this is most notable in the final Book VI, the metaphors and similes just pale in comparison to the story Vida wants to tell.  The aftermath of Book V’s crucifixion scene halters, sputters, and just collapses into an overly-extended epilogue that while it does relate the eventual triumph of Christ, it just feels anticlimactic. This reduced narrative power lessened the impact of the whole Christiad for me, moving it from being a near-equal to Milton to something slightly lesser in nature.  That being said, Christiad certainly is one of the finer neo-Latin works of the Italian Renaissance and a work that I would recommend to those who have some background in Latin to read.  For those who aren’t Latinophones, Harvard Univeristy Press’s I Tatti Renaissance Library edition of Christiad does have modern English translation that does capture much of the power of the Latin original.  It certainly is a work that is important even today, even though its influence has waned with the decline of Latin readers.

Digenis Akritas: The Two-Blood Border Lord (trans. Denison B. Hull)

 

Praises, trophies, and an ode
To thrice-blest Basil, the Border Lord,
A man most noble and most brave,

Whose strength was a gift to him from God.

He overcame all Syria,

Babylon and all Charziané,

Armenia and Cappadocia,

Amorium and Iconium,

And that great famous castle too,

Though mighty and well fortified,

I mean Ancyra – all of Smyrna,

And conquered lands beside the sea.

Now I’ll disclose to you the deeds 

Which he accomplished in this life:

How he filled valiant fighting men

As well as all the beasts with awe,

Having as help the grace of God,

God’s Mother, the indomitable,

The angels and archangels too,

And the victorious great martyrs,

Both the all-glorious Theodores,

The army leader and recruit.

And noble George of many labors

The miracle-working martyrs’ martyr

Sublime Demetrius, the patron

Of Basil, and the boast and pride

Of him who vanquished all his foes,

The Hagarenes and Ishmaelites

And barbarous Scyths who rage like dogs. (pp. 3-4)

It is almost impossible to begin a discussion of Digenis Akritas without first laying out what it is and what is is not:  It is not an “epic” of the style of Homer and Vergil, although the main character of Basil, the titular two-blood border lord, most certainly possesses epic heroic traits; it had a multi-generational gestation period, derived largely from ninth and tenth century events that were interwoven and mutated over generations of folk tales into the forms it reached when the tales of Basil began to be written down in the last centuries of the Roman/Byzantine Empire; it is a simple tale, or perhaps it’s better to argue that it is rooted more deeply in popular motifs than were the simile-ridden epics of the early Empire period.  Digenis Akritas is perhaps best viewed as sui generis, combining the profound Orthodox beliefs of the people with tales of heroism on the borders of the Empire as it struggled to maintain a firm border in the Tarsus Mountains of Asia Minor against Arab raids for over two centuries after the capture of Jerusalem from the Romans.

Digenis Akritas, like most of its contemporaries, existed for centuries in various forms before being published in Western European vernaculars in the 18th and 19th centuries.  In his Introduction, translator/editor Denison B. Hall discusses in depth the histories of six different Greek texts and one Slavonic text that each captured snippets of Basil’s (and his father, the Emir, before him).  Hall chose to use the Grottaferrata version, discovered in a Greek rite monastery of Grottaferrata near Frascati, Italy in 1879, as the core of this English translation, as it contains the clearest tale of Basil and his father before him from beginning to end.

At first glance, Digenis Akritas is an odd poem.  Unlike the classical epics that begin in media res or like modern stories that begin with the protagonist, this poem devotes the first three of the eight books of the Grottaferrata version to his father, the Emir, and how he came to bring his 12,000 strong soldiers over to the side of the Romans, as well as his conversion to Christianity and further adventures before and just after his son Basil was born. While this might at first glance seem to be grounds for a disjointed and uneven tale, a further examination reveals that the first parts are just as integral to the overall poem as those books devoted to our titular hero.  Recall that Digenis Akritas is in origin a collection of folk tales about the borderlands of the 9th and 10th centuries and that with the spread of these tales, more and more elements were grafted onto the core historical events and personages.  The end result is a poem in which the first three books foreshadow the events of Basil’s time on the eastern frontier, creating a sort of doubling effect that does not confuse the reader as much as provide a reinforcement of thematic elements throughout the entire poem.

The anonymous composer(s) of Digenis Akritas did not employ the dactylic hexameters of classical Greco-Roman epic poetry, but rather utilized a fifteen-syllable “political verse” that depended more on a pattern of unstressed-stressed-unstressed syllables to create a strong, flowing rhythm that did not depend upon rhyme.  The English near-equivalent is ten-syllable verse, which Hull uses to create a fast-paced flow to the poem.  The result is an energetic poem that swiftly flows from metaphor to action and back in a matter of a score of lines.  In addition, the religious elements, namely the complementary nature of heroism and faith, are clear and concise.  Digenis Akritas was intended both to entertain and to reinforce Christian morals and for the most part, it succeeds at blending these two seemingly disparate elements into a whole.

I alluded to the difficulties in categorizing Digenis Akritas above, but it is worth repeating that the value one may find in this poem lies in understanding what it is and what it isn’t.  If you read it expecting motifs and strong similarities to Homer or Vergil, for example, you will be disappointed that it is something else. However, if read as what is possesses in its own right, an entertaining and concise series of tales welded together with few seams exposed, Digenis Akritas certainly is an excellent tale and perhaps is one of the better fictions to emerge from the medieval Roman/Byzantine period.