2. Title
, ,
reading seemed questionable. I have further collated five of the earliest manuscripts, which were not available to Forbes but are now online (O V W X Z), and also collated the Latin translations of Dionysius and Eriugena, both of which had been done by their previous editors (Forbes and Mandolino, respectively), but now brought together with further observations.
2. Title Aspects of the four elements of the work—title, Letter to Peter, list of headings, and the divisions within the treatise—have many variations from the earliest testimonies to the work and within the manuscript traditions. The division of works into chapters, the use of chapter titles, the development of a table of contents, and other similar matters were unfortunately not of much interest to previous generations of editors. These 'paratexts' have, however, garnered more interest in recent decades and are important, for they have much to offer us in our understanding of the work itself and the history of its reception.³⁹
The earliest witness to Gregory's treatise, writing only a century and a half after Gregory himself, is Dionysius Exiguus (c.470–540) in his letter to Eugippus which accompanied his translation of this treatise of Gregory. In the letter he refers to the work as De conditione hominis and mentions that it is divided into 31 chapters (PL 67, 345c). However, the manuscripts of his translation used by Forbes (for the work has yet to be fully edited) have the title De imagine id est de hominis conditione as well as De conditione hominis; the manuscripts consistently divide the work into 31 chapters, but differ as to whether
³⁹ Most of the recent work has concentrated on the Latin tradition. See J.-C. Fredouille, MarieOdile Goulet-Cazé, Philippe Hoffmann, and Pierre Petitmengin, Titres et articulation du texte dans les ouvrages antiques: Actes du Colloque International de Chantilly, 13–15 décembre 1994, CÉA, SA
152 (Paris: Institut d'Études Augustiniennes, 1997); Bianca-Jeanette Schröder, Titel und Text: Zur
Entwicklung lateinischer Gedichtüberschriften. Mit Untersuchungen zu lateinischen Buchtiteln,
Inhaltsverzeichnissen und anderen Gliederungsmitteln (Berlin:
De Gruyter, 1999); Andrew M. Riggsby, 'Guides to the Wor(l)d', in Jason König and Tim Whitmarsh, eds., Ordering
Knowledge in the Roman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 88–107; Laura
Jansen, The Roman Paratext: Frame, Texts, Readers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014);
Joseph A. Howley, 'Tables of Contents', in Dennis Duncan and Adam Smith, Book Parts (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2019), 67–79; Nicholas Dames, 'Chapter Heads', in Duncan and Smith,
Book Parts, 153–64; and for the Greek tradition, Patrick Andrist, 'Towards a Definition of Paratexts and Paratextuality: The Case of Ancient Greek Manuscripts', in Liv Ingeborg Lied and Marilena
Maniaci, eds., Bible as Notepad: Tracing Annotations and Annotation Practices in Late Antique and Medieval Biblical Manuscripts, Manuscripta Biblica 3 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018), 130–50; Jeremiah
Coogan, 'Transforming Textuality: Porphyry, Eusebius, and Late Ancient Tables of Contents', SLA
5.1 (2021), 6–27. See also the fascinating series of postings on this topic by Roger Pearse over the last decade at www.roger-pearse.com (accessed 7 March 2020), tagged 'chapter headings'. For a critical study of the importance of such phenomena, see Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane E. Lewin, Literature, Culture, Theory 20 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997 [French edn. 1987]).
or not they have a list of headings following the Letter to Peter.⁴⁰ Three centuries later, Eriugena, who also translated the work, refers to it in his Periphyseon as Gregory's Sermo de imagine; his translation seems to have contained 31 chapters and lacks a list of headings.⁴¹ In the case of both Dionysius and Eriugena, however, their rendering of Gregory's Letter to Peter concludes with the sentence introducing a list of headings. Regarding translations, it should be noted that Vat. sir. 106, dated to approximately 700 , has the title On the Formation [twqn'] of the Human Being and is divided into 31 chapters, with a list of headings following the Letter to Peter. We will return to this important manuscript later.
Our earliest reference to the work in Greek is provided by Justinian in his Epistle to Mennas (543 ), where he refers to it as ἡεἰς τὸν ἄνθρωπον πραγματεία, and quotes two passages from chapter 28, without providing a chapter number.⁴²
The 7th–8th-century text known as Doctrina Patrum de Incarnatione Verbi gives three passages from this work of Gregory, together with chapter numbers. The first, from chapter 4, refers to the work as ἡεἰς τὸν ἄνθρωπον θεωρία. For the second and third quotations, Diekamp gives the title as ἡεἰς τὸν ἄνθρωπον κατασκευή, although the 15th-century manuscript Vaticanus gr. 1102 gives it as ἡεἰς τὸν ἄνθρωπον ὅτι κατ᾽εἰκόνα; these two passages are said to have come from chapter ι& (16, which is chapter 15 in this edition), indicating that the manuscripts used were divided into 31 chapters.⁴³ In the 8th century, John of Damascus, despite quoting from it in his Apology for the Holy Icons, refers to it as περὶ κατασκευῆς ἀνθρώπου.⁴⁴ John also provides references to the chapter number from which he quotes, although as these are from chapters 4 to 5, it is not possible to determine whether his text had 30 or 31 chapters. The Sacra Parallela, attributed to John of Damascus, also has a number of passages from Gregory's work, referring to it as ἡεἰς τὸν ἄνθρωπον θεωρίας. Suidas also refers to this work of Gregory as τεῦχος θαυμάσιον εἰς τὴν τοῦἀνθρώπου κατασκευὴν. As noted earlier, the first printed edition of the work, that of the Aldus Press (1536), entitled the ⁴⁰ Oxford, Laud Misc. 123 (12th century), on 94r has the title De imagine id est de hominis conditione and is divided into 31 chapters, with no list of chapters; Oxford Ms Bodl. 238 (14th century), on 285v has the title De conditione hominis, and is also divided into 31 chapters, but has a list of headings different to any other mss.
⁴¹ John Scottus Eriugena, Periphyseon (De divisione naturae), ed. I. P. Sheldon-Williams, Scriptores
Latini Hiberniae, 7, 9, 11, 13 (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Study, 1999 [1968], 2017 [1972],
2005 [1981], 2009 [1995]): vol. 3: 735d5 (p. 292), 737a17 (p. 294); vol. 4: 758c1 (p. 40), 788a2 (p. 110),
788b2 (p. 112), 793c1 (p. 124). The only complete manuscript of Eriugena's translation (Bamberg,
Staatsbibliothek Patr. 78) has for the title: Sermo Gregorii Episcopi Nysae de <Imagine> in ea quae relicta sunt in Examero a beato Basilio suo fratre; the ms has a space where Mandolino has supplied imagine. A number of the later chapters numbers are missing (e.g. 24–6, 30); however, as chapter 12
(in the division into 30 chapters) is divided into two, it seems certain that Eriugena's translation originally contained 31 chapters, as does Q, which Tommasi identifies as having the greatest affinity with his translation, though Q also has a list of headings.
⁴² Ed. Eduard Schwartz, ACO 3, 199.21–200.37.
⁴³ Ed. Franz Diekamp, rev. B. Phanourgakis and E. Chrysos (Münster: Aschendorff, 1981), 122,
140–1.
⁴⁴ Ed. Kotter, 3, 153.3–11, 154.3–9.
, ,
treatise Βίβλος περὶἄνθρωπον. This edition is divided into 30 chapters (though they are not numbered), and it places the list of headings at the end of the work, after the colophon, rather than after the Letter to Peter. It was only with Löwenklau's edition (1567) that it became customary to refer to the work as περὶ κατασκευῆς ἀνθρώπου—De hominis opificio—and to present it in 30 chapters with a list of headings following the Letter to Peter, although the list was then omitted in both the editio Morelliana and the PG, but included by Forbes.
While we await a full study of the Greek manuscript tradition, from those inspected for this volume and the information regarding those manuscripts belonging to the Hexaemeron tradition given by de Mendieta and Rudberg, it is clear that the manuscripts are themselves divided regarding the title and the number of chapters (and that this difference cuts across the two main manuscript groups). The earliest manuscripts which have a title for this work give it as περὶ εἰκόνος ἀνθρώπου: that is, from the 9th to 10th centuries, Vat. grec 413, which lacks the Letter to Peter but does have a list of 31 headings between the initial title and chapter 1;⁴⁵ and, from the 10th to 11th centuries, Bodl. Barocci grec 228, again with 31 chapters but also supplying a list of headings. From the 11th to 16th centuries, there are four other manuscripts (one of which is incomplete) which use περὶ εἰκόνος ἀνθρώπου as the title, each with 31 chapters and two with a list of headings.⁴⁶ The title θεωρία εἰς τὴν κατασκευὴν τοῦἀνθρώπου is first found in the explicit of two 10th-century manuscripts, neither of which have an initial title to the treatise, but each of which have 30 chapters and a list of headings: Bodl. Barocci grec 144, and Paris, BNF, grec 476.⁴⁷ The earliest manuscript with 31 chapters which uses the designation θεωρία εἰς τὴν κατασκευὴν τοῦἀνθρώπου, although again only in the explicit (for it has as the title περὶεἰκόνος ἀνθρώπου), is Bodleian Barocci grec
228 from the 10th to 11th centuries. Also from the same period, Paris, BNF, Coislin 228 uses an abbreviated form of this designation, though as a concluding phrase in the heading to the Letter to Peter it has: ΤῷἀδελφῷδούλῳΘεοῦΠέτρῳ ἐπισκόπῳΓρηγόριος ἐπίσκπος νύσης εἰς τὸν ἄνθρωπον. The first clear example of a ⁴⁵ According to de Mendieta and Rudberg, Basile de Césarée, 119, Vat. grec 413 (which is not online) is missing the Letter to Peter, but has the list of 31 headings (374v–375v), and has the treatise under the title περὶεἰκόνος ἀνθρώπου (375v–413r); folios 1–2 and 412–13 of this ms were replaced in the 16th century.
⁴⁶ Athos, Lavra, grec B.77 (11th century), with no list of headings; Munich, BSB, Cod. graec. 192
(14th century) and Vienna, ÖNB, theol. gr. 113 (15th century), both with a list of headings; and the incomplete 16th-century Munich, BSB, Cod. graec. 206, which, as chapter 18/19 is designated as 19, would also have been in 31 chapters. It is interesting to note that this is also the title given in the Slavonic translation (О Образѣ Чловѣка); see Sels, Gregory of Nyssa.
⁴⁷ Vat. grec 2053 (9th–10th centuries) is also divided into 30 chapters but has no initial title; after the Letter to Peter it has the heading Τοῦὁσίου πατρὸς ἡμῶν Γρηγορίου Νύσης. σύνταξις κεφαλαίων λ, but then goes straight to chapter 1, without providing a list of headings. Likewise Vat. grec 2066 (9th–10th centuries), without an initial title, is also divided into 30 chapters and provides a list of headings following the Letter to Peter. The remaining ms from this period, Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale di San
Marco, grec 58, has 31 chapters and has a different title, mentioned below.
manuscript with 31 chapters, a list of headings, and the title θεωρία εἰς τὴν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου κατασκευήν, given after the Letter to Peter and before the list of headings, is the 12th-century Moscow, Musée historique, grec 81 Vladimir.⁴⁸
Besides the five manuscripts mentioned here, 20 other manuscripts use this title, variously having either 30 or 31 chapters (see Appendix).
It should also be noted that other manuscripts refer to Gregory's work in yet other ways. Some present the work simply as a completion of the Hexaemeron of Basil.⁴⁹ The 12th-century manuscript Paris, BN, grec 479 has the title εἰς τὸν ἄνθρωπον θεωρία, which is closest to that used in the Aldus edition (Βίβλος περὶ ἀνθρώπου): it, however, is divided into 31 chapters and includes a list of headings.
Several manuscripts use other words than κατασκευή: διάπλασις,⁵⁰ κτίσις,⁵¹ or even just ἡγένεσις.⁵² Finally, to conclude this survey, two outliers should be noted.
First, the 15th-century manuscript Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, grec 668 (Q. 14 sup.) which contains 32 chapters. Second, the 14th-century ms of English provenance, Oxford, Ms Bodl. 238, which has a list of headings not found in any other manuscript, the origin of which is totally obscure.⁵³
Regarding the title of the treatise, then, although John of Damascus refers to it as περὶκατασκευῆς ἀνθρώπου, no manuscript examined, or noted by Mendieta and Rudberg, has these words; rather the title given in the majority of manuscripts is θεωρία εἰς τὴν κατασκευὴν τοῦἀνθρώπου. It is possible that the preposition εἰς together with the word θεωρία is derived from the Letter to Peter, where Gregory describes his task as completing what is lacking in Basil's Hexaemeron (Ep. Pet. 2:
Εἰγὰρ λειπούσης τῇἙξαημέρῷτῆς εἰς τὸν ἄνθρωπον θεωρίας . . .), and then continues by saying that 'our effort would be convicted of failing its promise, if,
⁴⁸ Pinakes gives this manuscript a date in the first half of the 10th century, but M–R note that while this is so for folios 2–120, folios 121–235 (Gregory's treatise is 189r–234r) date to the 12th century.
⁴⁹ Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale di San Marco, grec 58 (10th century), εἰς τὴν ἀναπλήρωσιν τῶν προκειμένων τῆς ἐξαημέρου. London, British Library, Royal MS 16 D I (13th century) has two headings on 117v: ἘπιστολὴΓργορίου ἐπισκόπου Νύσης πρὸς Πέτρον τὸν ἴδιον ἀδελφὸν εἰς τὰλοιπὰτοῦ ἐξαημέρου τοῦἀδελφοῦαὐτῷΒασιλείου. Then, immediately following the first: Τῷἀδελφῷαὐτοῦ
ΠέτρῳἐπισκόπῳΓρηγόριος ἐπίσκοπος Νύσης προοίμιον τῶν λα κεφαλαίων τῶν ἐν τῇἐξαημέρῳ λεχθέντων τὰπαραλειπόμενα τοῦμεγάλου Βασιλείου.
⁵⁰ All from the 14th century: Moscow, Musée historique, grec 132 Vladimir, Κεφάλαια τριάκοντα εἰς τὴν τοῦἀνθρώπου διάπλασιν. Paris, BN, grec 503, πρόγραμμα εἰς τὴν περὶδιαπλάσεως τοῦἀνθρώπου φιλοσοφίαν ἢφυσιολογίαν. Paris, BN, grec 940, and grec 777 A, 14th πρόγραμμα εἰς τὴν περὶδιαπλάσεως τοῦἀνθρώπου φυσιολογίαν. The use of the word φυσιολογία in these two Paris manuscripts suggests a connection or derivation from the first chapter title.
⁵¹ Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale di San Marco, grec 58 (10th century), which gives a list of 31 headings under the title: κεφάλαια ἐμπιλόσοφα περὶτῆς τοῦἀνθρώπου κτίσεως· καὶπερὶτῆς τοῦ κόσμου δὲμερικῶς· ἅπερ ἦν λείποντα τῇἐξαημέρῳ· ἥν προείρηκεν ὁμακάριος καὶἐν ἁγίοις Βασίλειος.
⁵² Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, 11.354 (12th century): Τοῦἐν ἁγίοις πατρὸς ἡμῶν Γρηγορίου ἀρχιεπισκόπου Νύσης ἡγένεσις. See also Vienna, ÖNB, theol. gr. 222 (14th century): ΤοῦΓρηγορίου ἐπισκόπου Νύσσης πρὸς πέτρον τὸν ἴδιον ἀδελφὸν εἰς τὰλοιπὰτῆς ἐξαημέρου τοῦἀδελφοῦαὐτῷ
Βασιλείου περὶτῶν προγεγονότων τῶν τοῦἀνθρώπου γενέσεως. This title is clearly derivative from the first chapter title.
⁵³ It should also be noted that ß (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, grec 1277) is also anomalous in that it alone has the list of headings preceding the Letter to Peter.
, ,
when the human being is proposed for contemplation, anything contributing to the topic were to be omitted' (Ep. Pet. 3: εἰτοῦἀνθρώπου προκειμένου τῇθεωρίᾳ, παρεθείη τι τῶν συντεινόντων πρὸς τὴν ὑπόθεσιν·). It is also possible that the title περὶκατασκευῆς ἀνθρώπου, or variations thereon, may in turn derive from Gregory's Hexaemeron, written soon after On the Human Image: towards the end of the Hexaemeron, Gregory refers back to the present treatise, noting that Basil 'left aside nothing of the things requiring a contemplation, except the formation of the human being [πλὴν τῆς τοῦἀνθρώπου κατασκευῆς] which we laboring over in a particular book before these, sent to your perfection'.⁵⁴ On the other hand, the title found in the earliest manuscripts, Περὶεἰκόνος ἀνθρώπου, and in the translations of Dionysius and Eriugena, does not appear to be derived from either the Letter to Peter or Gregory's Hex., or even from any part of the text of the treatise itself, but is in fact, as we shall see in Chapter 3, very much the central theme of the work itself. Moreover as the title θεωρία εἰς τὴν κατασκευὴν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου is first found in the explicit of a manuscript, in which the title heading the treatise is Περὶεἰκόνος ἀνθρώπου, and following Dionysius (De imagine id est de hominis conditione), I have adopted as the title of the work: Περὶεἰκόνος ἀνθρώπου ἤτοι θεωρία εἰς τὴν κατασκευὴν τοῦἀνθρώπου (or in Latin De hominis imagine, id est contemplatio de hominis conditione, abbreviated to De hom.).
One final problem remains: how best to translate the word κατασκευή?
Dionysius rendered it as conditio, while Löwenklau chose opificium, which, while not evidenced in any manuscript, has become the standard designation.
As noted above, the term has been rendered variously in modern languages, more often than not focusing on the idea of making or creating.⁵⁵ The term κατασκευή, however, has a far wider range of meanings: preparation, construction, fitting-out, state, condition, constitution, and, in the field of rhetoric, artistic treatment, elaboration.⁵⁶ Although often read as a treatment on how the human being came to be made and what happened after the fall, the work is, as we will see, more concerned with the form and constitution of the human being and how and why it is that the human being is said to be made in the image and likeness of God when this is not really self-evident in the present. In this, Gregory's treatise is indeed continuous with Basil's Hexaemeron as understood by Gregory, who describes Basil as having 'by his own contemplation made the sublime adornment
⁵⁴ Hex. 77: τοῖς δὲλοιποῖς ἐπεξιέναι τῶν κατὰτὴν ἑξαήμερον κοσμογένειαν πεποιημένων μάταιον ἐνομίσαμεν, τῆς ὑψηλῆς τοῦδιδασκάλου φωνῆς μηδὲν τῶν ζητουμένων εἰς θεωρίαν παραλειπούσης πλὴν τῆς τοῦἀνθρώπου κατασκευῆς, ἣν ἡμεῖς ἐν ἰδιάζοντι βιβλίῳπρὸτούτων πονήσαντες ἀπεστείλαμέν σου τῇ τελειότητι. Maraval, 'Chronology of Works', would place it in the early months of 379, but after the present treatise which was composed between September 378 and Easter 379.
⁵⁵ The Russian translation by B. Lurie is a case apart: Об устроении человека, which has the sense of order/ordering or arranging/arrangement or structure. My thanks to John Mikitish for his insights on this. B. Salmona entitled his Italian translation simply: L'uomo.
⁵⁶ Cf. H. G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, rev. H. S. Jones with R. McKenzie. 9th edn. with revised supplement (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), s.v. (hereafter, LSJ).