Gregory Nazianzen

GREGORY NAZIANZEN. - Together with Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa, G. of Nazianzus forms the triad of the so-called "luminaries of Cappadocia." He did not possess, or did not possess to the same degree as Basil, the virtue of action, nor the speculative vigor of the Nyssen; but he possessed, albeit to a lesser degree, both virtues (although his was a meditative temperament, fond of solitude, and his mind was more that of a man of letters than of a philosopher): and, greater than in the other two, the gift of speech; but not of speech for its own sake, which is the reason for the impression of emptiness and falsity left by the books of the pagan writers of his time, but of speech filled with all its dialectical and emotional meaning. More than "theologian," as he was called, he would deserve to be called "the orator."

I. LIFE

G. of Nazianzus was born probably in 330, at Arianzus, a village of the Tiberina in Cappadocia, near Nazianzus. His father, also named Gregory, had converted to Christianity, after having belonged to the Judeo-pagan sect of the Hypsistarians, worshippers of the "Most High," then had become a priest and then a bishop; his mother, Nonna, was a Christian, and was "a woman in body, but in character superior to a man" (De vita sua, 59). She desired to see a male child in her house - G. recounts - and turned to God, offering him the unborn child as a gift; and a nocturnal vision appeared to her, which revealed to her the appearance and the name of the future son. And when the son came, he was already alieni iuris, he belonged to God "like a lamb or a calf, a most noble victim adorned with reason." He began his studies at Caesarea in Cappadocia, where he met Basil, to whom he was to be bound by a devoted friendship, which was not harmed by the difference in temperaments (G.'s was changeable and inconstant, while Basil's was as resolute and steady), and in which G.'s part always retains the tone of a generous humility. He then went to Caesarea in Palestine, where he had as his teacher the rhetorician Thespesius, and then to Alexandria, at the time when Athanasius was patriarch there; and from there, after an adventurous journey, to Athens, where he was joined by Basil and where he heard Prohaeresius, the Christian rhetorician, and met Julian, the future apostate emperor. He stayed in Athens a little longer than Basil, and perhaps gave lectures on rhetoric there; on the journey back to his homeland, he stopped at Byzantium, where he met his brother Caesarius, and where he received Baptism (it seems, in 360). Having returned to Nazianzus, he "danced for his friends," as he himself says; that is, he worked as a rhetorician: uncertain, then, whether to abandon himself to the solitude he desired and thus realize his ideal of the ascetic life, which his stay in Alexandria, with the examples of cenobitic life that it offered, must have confirmed in his soul, or to give the necessary assistance to his old and ailing parents, he chose a middle solution, dividing himself somewhat between Nazianzus and Basil's hermitage near Neocaesarea.

From this period there is perhaps, together with the drafting of the monastic rules, the Philocalia, a series of extracts, also made in collaboration with Basil, from the works of Origen, whose memory he had found alive in the schools of Caesarea in Palestine and of Alexandria, and to whose influence he was not to submit without difficulty. The conditions of the Church of Nazianzus in fact made G.'s presence necessary, at a time when the danger of heresy - the formula of Rimini, subscribed to also by G.'s father, "out of simplicity of soul," as the biographer of his son says -

and the agitations of the monks threatened the peace and unity of the Church. G. restored peace, probably in 360; the following year - if the date is certain - he was ordained a priest by his father, "by a tyrannical act," as he himself says; and he then fled, bewildered before the magnitude of the task, to Pontus, to his friend Basil, and did not return until after the insistent prayers of his father, at whose side he would remain for nine years, helping him in the administration of the diocese. One of the most notable acts he performed in this period was the pacification between the bishop of Caesarea, Eusebius, and Basil, accomplished through his good offices. In 368 his brother Caesarius died; in 371 Basil, already for a year archbishop of Caesarea, during the jurisdictional struggle he had with Anthimus, bishop of Tyana, created several new dioceses, and placed his friend G. at the head of that of Sasima. The dreary village, located in the middle of the main road of Cappadocia, dusty and resounding with shouts, with weeping, with chains, inhabited by foreigners and travelers, was certainly not the environment suited to that life of "philosophy," which was G.'s dream, and, from the religious standpoint, it offered the unpleasant prospect of a period of turmoil and struggles. G. did not know how to refuse, despite the sadness and indignation that Basil's measure aroused in him, but he did not take possession of the diocese, for, as soon as the election had taken place, he had (as his biographer says) "meditated flight in his soul." He took refuge in solitude, but once again he returned from it because of his father's prayers, serving as his coadjutor. When his parents died, in 374, G. remained free ("free at a bad moment," οὐ καλῶς ἐλεύθερος), and he then left Nazianzus to retire to the convent of St. Thecla, at Seleucia in Isauria; and it is here that he learned the news of the death of Basil, which occurred in 379 (but only in 381 would he be able to deliver his funeral eulogy at Caesarea). But meanwhile events were maturing that were to draw him once again from his quiet.

On the death of Valens, Theodosius had succeeded, in 379, to the government of the Eastern Empire; with an edict of 27 February 380, the new Emperor announced to his peoples that all must profess "the religion already taught by the apostle Peter to the Romans, and currently proclaimed by the pontiff Damasus and by Peter, bishop of Alexandria." In Constantinople the masters of the churches were still the Arians, headed by the bishop Demophilus; but as soon as the situation began to look more favorable, the orthodox took heart again and thought of reorganizing. The orthodox of the East encouraged this recovery on the part of their friends in Constantinople, and among them, already from the time of his retreat at St. Thecla, G. was chosen to lead that nucleus of orthodox. G. had to be much entreated, but was finally induced, in 379, to set out for the "new Rome." A makeshift little church, the Anastasia, with its fine symbolic name, welcomed the small flock of the Nicenes and witnessed — until the Cathedral was restored to the Catholics — the triumph of G.'s great eloquence (the five theological orations, which earned him the name of "Theologian," belong to this period), on account of which Jerome traveled from Syria to Constantinople to hear the word of the man whom he was to greet as his master (De viris ill., 177). But the task of the new pastor was made particularly difficult, besides by the hostility of the Arians, by the rivalries and discords of the Catholics. The case of Maximus, an equivocal figure of Cynic philosopher and ascetic, who, strong in the support of the bishop of Alexandria, Peter, after insinuating himself into the friendship of the good G., attempts by a coup de main to have himself proclaimed bishop of Constantinople, is characteristic of the religious customs of the time. Maximus was driven out by the mass of the faithful who loved G., and in vain he tried to obtain justice before Theodosius and before the bishop of Alexandria — later, with better fortune it seems, also in Rome, before Damasus —; but snares of every sort and violence (already at the beginning G. had run the risk of being stoned) were bound in the end to weary a temperament such as G.'s: who would once again have fled, had it not been for the thought that "together with him the Trinity would depart from Constantinople." Meanwhile the situation was resolving itself in his favor. Theodosius entered Constantinople on 24 Nov. 380 and, two days later, took the churches from the Arians to give them back to the Catholics; Demophilus was forced to withdraw from Constantinople; G., following the Emperor, was led in procession to St. Sophia with great solemnity, amid a large display of force. In the church, where the sun bursting suddenly through the windows on that cloudy morning had seemed the sign of God's favor, the crowd acclaimed G. as bishop; and bishop he was in fact, even before the Council convoked by Theodosius in 381, under the presidency of the bishop of Antioch Meletius — at least the first bishops to arrive — had proclaimed him bishop of Constantinople. Nevertheless, new difficulties soon arose; Meletius having died during those days, the succession to the see of Antioch was open; G., conciliatory, who had meanwhile been called to preside over the assembly, was in favor of the succession of Paulinus, who had been bishop of Antioch during the schism of that see, and it was the natural solution, urged also by the Westerners. But the Meletians, who were the majority in the Council, decided not to recognize Paulinus and set up another candidate against him, Flavian. Meanwhile new participants arrived at the Council, the bishops of Egypt and Macedonia, favorable to Paulinus (among them Timothy, who had succeeded Peter in the see of Alexandria), who, not out of hatred for G., but for the Meletians who had elected him, began to contest G.'s election, on the pretext that he, as bishop of Sasima, could not, by virtue of the canon of Antioch, be transferred to another see (in reality G. had never taken possession of the diocese of Sasima). All this deeply embittered G., who in the end resigned from his office — in which he was replaced by Nectarius — and, in July 381, having bidden farewell to his church of Constantinople, returned to Cappadocia, to Nazianzus. He remained there two years, administering that church which had long been deprived of its bishop; afterward, having had a successor appointed in the person of Eulalius, he retired to Arianzus where he lived — it seems until 389 or 390 — amid ascetic practices and his beloved studies, from which the events of life, sometimes turbulent, had distracted him, but not entirely drawn him away.

Doctor of the Church, feast 9 May; in the Greek church 19 or 25 Jan.

II. WORKS

The work of G. is quite vast: it comprises 45 orations, 245 letters and a great quantity of verses, about 17,000, distributed among several hundred poems. Of the orations, very few are of an exegetical character (XXXVII, XLV: what Jerome recounts, Ep. 2 ad Nepotianum, about a declaration that G. is said to have made to him on exegetical matters is less "indeed not at all" a proof of the speaker's glibness in this field than of the habits of the crowd, "which admires more what it does not understand"), and strictly moral ones. Among these, the most beautiful is the one on love for the poor, XIV, delivered at Caesarea, probably in 373, some time before the construction of that great hospice for the poor and the lepers, which was the "city of Basil" (with which, in any case, it must be connected). Most are occasional or polemical discourses; few, but of the highest importance, are the theological orations.

Among the occasional discourses, the Epitaphs or funeral discourses are above all to be remembered: for his brother Caesarius (VII, delivered between 368 and 369: it must be said at once, even if the observation does not concern this oration, that the chronology of the orations is in many cases disputed), for his sister Gorgonia (VIII, between 369 and 374), for his father (XVIII, of 374), and especially the one for Basil, which by many is considered, and not wrongly, as the masterpiece of G. (XLIII, of 381): all rich in family and historical information, and fresh with vivid memories and impressions, even amid the rhetorical schemes of the genre. Of particular importance is the Apology for his flight (II, of 362, following shortly after I, delivered on his return from his flight): in it — the oration that survives is an expansion of the one delivered — he justifies himself for having fled, after the ordination to the priesthood conferred on him by his father: a justification, however, that deals especially with the tasks and duties of the priest, before the magnitude of which he had fled, not out of cowardice or weakness, but out of fear of being unequal to a task whose incomparable, superhuman loftiness he saw, unlike others: the homily is therefore almost a treatise, and deserved to be kept in mind by St. John Chrysostom in the composition of his most beautiful De sacerdotio.

Distinguished from the others, by their particular nature, are the two "discourses of infamy," λόγοι στηλετευτικοί — IV and V, of 363-64 — against Julian the Apostate, which almost certainly were never delivered; discourses of overflowing violence, and therefore perhaps not always serene in their assessment of the facts, and laden with rhetorical artifices, but animated by a breath of sincere, powerful passion. Some are panegyrics of saints (of St. Cyprian of Antioch [XXIV, of 379], St. Athanasius [XXI, of 373 or 379]) or eulogies (of Meron, an Alexandrian philosopher, in whom the Cynic Maximus has been seen [XXV, of 379], of the Maccabees, XV, of 373), or discourses intended for particular festive solemnities (Christmas, XXXVIII, of 379-80; Epiphany, XXXIX, of 380-81; Easter, XLV, later than 383; Pentecost, XLI, between 379 and 381, with the one on Baptism, XL, delivered the following day; In novam dominicam, XLIV, of 383).

Of particular interest are those discourses that refer to facts and episodes of G.'s life or to events that concerned him even indirectly: his appointment as bishop of Sasima (IX-XI, of 372), the attempt of Maximus (XXVI, of 380), his proclamation in St. Sophia (XXXVI, of Nov. 380), his definitive departure from Constantinople, after his resignation (XLII, of 381), the schism of Antioch (XXIII and XXXII, of 379), the conduct of his audience (III, of about 362), his installation in the church of Nazianzus (XII, of 372), the consecration of Eulalius as bishop of Doara (XIII, of 373), conditions in the city of Nazianzus (XVI, XVII, of 373; XIX, of 374), the controversy with the Arians over the restitution of the churches (XXXIII, XXXV, of 379-80), the arrival of the Egyptians (XXXIV, of 380), the reconciliation between G.'s father and the monks (VI, perhaps of 364).

The theological orations are five (XXVII-XXXI) and were delivered in 380, precisely, it would seem, after Feb. 28 and before Nov. 24, at Constantinople, in defense of Nicene orthodoxy, against the Arians: they represent the best that theological eloquence produced in the 4th century. In the first, directed against the Eunomians, he speaks of the qualities — which are not those of the first comer, even if talented, but require the attainment of a high degree of moral perfection — that must be possessed by the one who is called to speak of dogma; in the second, he speaks of the nature and attributes of God, and reaffirms the impossibility of defining Him in positive terms and without resorting to anthropomorphic expressions, which would, however, offer the risk of falling into idolatry; in the third, whose subject is the dogma of the Trinity, he establishes the equality of the Three Persons, and affirms, by recourse to the texts of the Scriptures and to faith, the divinity and consubstantiality of the Son, in opposition to the views of Eunomius; in the fourth he gives the correct interpretation of the biblical texts, first of all of Prov. 8:22, which the Arians made use of; in the fifth he affirms, against the objections of the Pneumatomachi or Macedonians — who took courage from the absence of any mention of the matter in the Scriptures — the divine nature of the Holy Spirit, not begotten (unlike the Son), but proceeding from the Father by ἐκπρόσωσις, by procession. Other discourses of a theological character are XX and XXXII, the one De dogmate, in which is demonstrated the necessity of knowledge of the Scriptures and of holiness of life in those who wish to occupy themselves with theology (and is affirmed, against Arius and Sabellius, the unity of nature and the trinity of Persons in God), the other De moderatione in disputationibus, in which is combated the theological mania of the Orientals: the first delivered in 379, the second in 380-81. Polemical, but fundamentally doctrinal in content, are also the aforementioned discourses XXXIII and XXXV, against the Arians, and the one on the arrival of the Egyptians (XXXIV).

The epistles belong for the most part, it seems, to the last years of G.'s life (383-89): important from the literary point of view — they seem to have been written with a view to publication — they are less so, or are not as much so as the letters of Basil or even those of John Chrysostom, in the historical and documentary respect. Some

— CI and CII to the priest Cledonius, CCII — are also of theological importance, for the clarification they bring to dogmatic concepts, and for the battle they wage against heresy, especially Apollinarian, and they exercised notable influence — CI — on the theological elaboration of the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon. Doubtful is the authenticity of epistle CCXLIII, to Evagrius, also notable in the theological respect (disputed, but it seems without true foundation, is that of letters XLI, XLII, XLIII).

The poems, too, for the most part a production of the last years of G.'s life, could be distinguished into autobiographical (among them, most notable the long poem De vita sua, of 1949 verses; one could include in this section also the satirical and polemical poems, such as the one against Maximus and those against Apollinaris), and those relating "to others," and into theological-moral poems. A separate section would be formed by the epitaphs and the epigrams; the iambics to Seleucus seem to be by Amphilochius of Iconium. Many of these poems, and not only those that obey purely practical aims, are nothing more than versified prose; but in several there is true poetry — those in which the author "confesses himself," questions himself, addresses his soul, expresses new feelings, unknown to pagan poetry, and, at times, with a new accent — and which reflect, even more than the orations and the letters, his temperament of a man of delicate sensibility, inclined more to meditation than to action, in the conflict that always tormented his spirit, between asceticism and the active life. But even some of the poems of thought, the dogmatic poems, albeit under the weight of erudite reminiscences and the effort of polemical construction, sometimes reveal, in the tremor of emotion and the anxiety of conquest, the drama of the soul in which poetry consists. Two hymns are particularly remembered - the Evening Hymn and the Exhortation to a Virgin - because they present perhaps the most ancient example of accentual meter. Not his, but that of a much later author, is the tragedy Χριστός πάσχων, which in the manuscripts bears his name, a work moreover of very slight value.

Of disputed authenticity - but it seems wrongly so - is the Testament, by which G., as early as 381, before leaving Constantinople, disposed of his goods in favor of the church of Nazianzus.

On the letters: M. Guignet, Les procédés épistolaires de st G. de N., Paris 1911 (in appendix to the above-cited volume); G. Przychocki, De Gregorii Nazianzeni epistulis quaettiones selectae, Krakow 1912; P. Gallay, Langue et style de st G. de N. dans sa correspondance, Paris 1933; id., Liste des manuscrits des lettres de st G. de N., in Revue des ét. grecques, 1944, pp. 106-24. - On the poems: A. Grenier, La vie et les poésies de st G. de N., Clermont-Ferrand 1858; P. Stoppel, Quaettiones de Gregorii Nazianzeni poetarum scatenorum imitatore, Rostock 1881; W. Ackermann, Die didaktische Poesie des Gregor von Nazianz, Leipzig 1903; L.F.M. De Jonge, De Gregori Nazianzeni carminibus quae inscribi solent negl. fauxus, Amsterdam 1910; Q. Cataudella, Le poesie de G. N., in Atene e Roma, 1927, pp. 88-96; M. Pellegrino, La poesia de G. N., Milan 1932; B. Wyss, in Museum Helveticum, 6 (1949), pp. 177-210.

III. DOCTRINE

G., though with the vices of the prevailing Asianism, largely redeemed by sincerity of feeling, was a writer of uncommon quality, a vigorous and effective orator, a lively polemicist, a lucid and well-armed reasoner: but he was not an original thinker, a philosopher; he did not create, nor even possess, a precise system of doctrines, outside the dogmatic field. He knew the Greek philosophers, and in his work influences of Plato are recognizable (the idea, for example, that like is known by like, etc.), of the Stoic and Cynic philosophers (in certain aspects of morality), of Neoplatonism (the world of spiritual essences, etc.): profane science, unlike what certain currents of Christian thought did, he did not repudiate, but wanted it as a handmaid of the sacred. In the moral regard, and especially in the social one, certain of his radical affirmations are noteworthy concerning the natural equality of all men - slaves and free, rich and poor - and concerning the problem, moreover seen in its moral function, of individual property and wealth; but even here the authority on which he relies is constituted essentially by the sacred books and by apostolic tradition.

Despite the surname of "Theologian" that he had, and the authority he acquired in this field, for which Rufinus could say (in the preface to his translation of certain orations of G., CSEL, 46) non esse rectae fidei omnem qui in fide Gregorio non concordat, his work cannot be placed on the same level as those who constructed the edifice of Catholic theology. It would not be just, however, to reduce, as is often customarily done, the work of G. to that of a simple authorized representative of the common belief of the Greek Church of the 4th century, that is, of a simple interpreter of the doctrine received by tradition.

Certainly, he is a first-rate interpreter of the Trinitarian faith, a lucid and coherent expounder of the doctrine of Athanasius and of Basil (the formula that he defends, "one sole essence in three hypostases," is specified by the other unum tres divinitate, et hoc unum tres proprietatibus, which expresses with admirable clarity his doctrine on the indivisibility of the divinity in the distinction of the three hypostases), but one must also add that he does not have the hesitations of the latter, attributed by G. to his "ἐκκλησία," that is, to prudent concessions to the expediency of the moment, on a point of Trinitarian doctrine, that concerning the divinity of the Holy Spirit. G. does not hesitate to proclaim it openly ("Is the Spirit God? Certainly. Therefore consubstantial, ὁμοιόσιον? Yes, if He is God, Or., XXXI, 10), and in the definition of the relationship among the Three Persons, and in particular of the relations of the Holy Spirit with the two other Persons, for which a fully established doctrine did not yet exist, he gives his contribution of clarification and precision, going further than his predecessors had done, in formulating the doctrine of the procession (ἐκπύρευσις) of the Holy Spirit. He defines the first of the Three Persons (hypostaseis) by means of the ἐκκλησία, the second by means of the γέννησις, the third by means of the ἐκπύρευσις. The Holy Spirit - he says in the same theological oration V - insofar as He proceeds from the Father, is not a creature; insofar as He is unbegotten, is not the Son; insofar as He is in the middle between the unbegotten and the begotten, is God. "You ask me what this ἐκπύρευσις is: well then, tell me what the ἀγεννησία of the Father is, and I will explain to you what the γέννησις of the Son is and the ἐκπύρευσις of the Holy Spirit." Catholic theology was to take but one step further, with the proclamation of the Filioque, to reach orthodoxy, as it was to be definitively fixed thereafter.

Also in the problem of the two natures in the person of Christ, Basil had not been rigorous enough, at least not as much as G., who tenaciously fought the Apollinarian heresy (Basil was accused instead of having been on good terms with Apollinaris), maintaining the impossibility that Christ possessed only the divine νοῦς and not also the human νοῦς, and demonstrating that the Redemption could be the work only of a Jesus in whose person the two natures, human and divine, were united together, without either of the two having had to suffer any diminution. To Mary he explicitly acknowledges the title of Θεοτόκος, of Mother of God. Concerning the doctrine of the Redemption, G. resolutely condemns, unlike what the others had done, the idea of a ransom price - which would be Christ - paid by God to the devil: to believe such a thing seems to him to do injury to the Lord. He admits the existence of a primal sin, and, while not denying the contribution brought by man, attributes to Grace the beginning and the end of every good; he believes - against the Novatians - in the efficacy of penance.

In biblical exegesis G., while clearly undergoing the influence of Origen, held, like the other Cappadocians, an intermediate position between the allegorical interpretation of the Alexandrians and the literal one of the school of Antioch (but, unlike the Nyssen, with a more accentuated tendency toward the former); moreover, he considers as depositaries of revealed truth not only the Bible but also all those who, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, were enlightened by it.

Quintino Cataudella