APOPHTHEGMATA PATRUM. – Apophthegm means a witty and sententious saying or reply, uttered by an oracle or an illustrious personage.
Among the Greeks there are sayings attributed to the Seven Sages, to Themistocles, and to Isocrates; three of the approximately 80 treatises by Plutarch included under the name of Moralia are entitled A. Diogenes Laërtius also made use of similar collections in composing his Lives of the Philosophers. Among the Romans, we know through Cicero that Cato and Caesar wrote volumes of apophthegms.
Early Christian literature, too, has transmitted examples of this kind: sayings, that is, or maxims issuing from the lips of the ancient ascetics, preserved and collected in the various monasteries of the East, first by tradition and later in writing. The texts contained in PG, however, must be connected with many other texts in Greek, Arabic, and Coptic; some of these have been published, but most still remain hidden in the manuscripts of the monasteries of Athos, Syria, and Egypt.
The most famous collection of these sayings was printed by Cotelier in 1677, precisely under the title Ἀπορθέγματα τῶν ἁγίων γεφάντων, in Latin A. P.; the edition was subsequently reproduced by Migne as a supplement to the Historia Lausiaca of Palladius (v.). We do not know who its author was. He combined, as best he could, earlier collections of sayings and arranged them according to the alphabetical order of the persons who had uttered them. In the preface, he himself tells us that no effort had been spared, because “there are numerous books in which the sayings and deeds of the holy elders are reported without any order.” Nor do we know precisely when it was composed: from external and internal evidence, this date seems not to be earlier than the first half of the sixth century; it certainly must be placed after 509 and perhaps even later. According to some critics, the Verba Seniorum, which constitute Books II, V, and VI of Rosweyde’s Vitae Patrum and contain almost the same material, though cited in the most complete disorder, are to be regarded as one of its principal sources. According to this hypothesis, since the Verba Seniorum seem to have been collected after 557, the date of composition should be moved to the second half of the sixth century. The author, however, made use of extensive pre-existing material that had circulated in small collections and in various languages since the middle of the sixth century. As for its country of origin, it appears to have been Egypt.
Besides Cotelier’s edition, there is a more extensive alphabetical collection in the manuscript of the British Museum, Burney 50. A third, topical collection, divided into 44 chapters, is preserved in a Latin version published by Rosweyde as Book VII of his Vitae Patrum. These three fundamental collections consist of more or less the same material, but each contains apophthegms not found in the others. Photius possessed a copy in which the sayings were arranged by subject, and gives the titles of the chapters in Bibliotheca, cod. 198 (PG 103, 664); the title of the collection is Ἀνδρῶν ἁγίων βίβλος (cf. PL 73, 852).
Several versions exist: Latin, edited by Rosweyde in the Vitae Patrum, Books II, V, and VI, which in reality seem to constitute a distinct work, as has been said; Armenian, in Le vite dei santi Padri (in Armenian), Venice 1855; Coptic, in Zoega, Catal. cod. copti., pp. 287–361, from a manuscript in the Vatican, a mere fragment; Syriac, published in vol. VII of P. Bedjan’s Acta Martyrum et Sanctorum, Paris 1890–97, who, perhaps following Migne, presents them as a third part of Palladius’s work and entitles them Paradiso dei Padri.
All this ascetic material, also known under the name Λεμωνάριον μέγα or patristic Paradise, was read devotionally in cloisters until the late Middle Ages.