Methodius of Olympus, Saint

METHODIUS OF OLYMPUS, Saint. - Of his person and his life it can be said with certainty only that he lived in Lycia and that he died a bishop and martyr ad extremum novissimae persecutionis, that is, around 312 (St. Jerome, De viris ill., 83; the falsity of the other notice sive ut alii affirmant sub Decio et Valeriano can be demonstrated with certainty). As his episcopal see, Olympus in Lycia is commonly named on the authority of Jerome (Olympi Lyciae... episcopus) and of Socrates (Hist. eccl., VI, 3). But St. Jerome adds the obscure notice: et postea Tyri episcopi, and Bishop John of Antioch says around 435: in Hellade vero et Illyrico Methodius (cf. F. Diekamp, Über den Bischofsitz des hl. Methodius, in Theol. Quartalschrift, 109 [1928], pp. 285-308). The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on 18 September (Martyr. Roman., p. 404).

Works and doctrine: the fate of St. M.'s works is likewise full of obscurity. St. Jerome gives a summary list of them, but Eusebius in the Hist. eccl. says not a word about them, although he knew the author, as is proved by a passage of his Apologia Origenis cited by St. Jerome, Contra Ruf., I, 11 (PL 23, 423): quomodo annus est Methodius nunc contra Origenem scribere, qui haec de Origenis locutus est dogmatibus. These words can explain his silence: he hates the adversary of Origen. But there is yet another difficulty. Eusebius cites in the De praeparatione evang., VII, 22, a passage taken from M.'s book, De autexousio, and names as its author a certain Maximus, whom his Hist. eccl. places in (temporal) proximity to Irenaeus. The problem becomes even more complicated: the same passage, much expanded, is found in the anonymous dialogue: De recta in Deum fide, also called, after its protagonist, Dialogus Adamantii; for this reason the dialogue was very early attributed to Origen. The Philosofia of Gregory of Nazianzus and of Basil repeats Eusebius's citation and judges the author to be Origen. Vaillant in his introduction to the edition of the De autexousio (PO 22, 5, 684 ff.) seeks to explain this strange situation also with the hypothesis of a Christian school around St. M., where the themes could to a certain degree be anonymous and shared. If this is true, the dialogic form of all of St. M.'s works would not be merely a literary imitation of Plato.

1) The only work preserved integrally in the original Greek bears the title: Convicium vel de castitate. Ten young women gathered in the garden of Arete under the "Agnos" tree (agnus castus) praise virginity in ten discourses. In order to give some introduction to the content of this work, which is the first in Christian literature on this theme, the first three discourses are briefly analyzed here. The first speaks of the development of the idea of virginity from the beginning up to Christ, who is not only archihierens, archipropheta archangelos but also archiparthenos (14). Through the virginity brought to us by Christ, man passes from the simple "imago dei" to the "similitudo", which is φθορᾶς ἀποφυγή. The second discourse defends marriage (Gen. 1, 28), although virginity surpasses it as the moon surpasses the stars. Virginity already here anticipates the erunt sicut angeli of Mt. 22, 30 (II, 7). The third discourse gives an allegorical exegesis of Gen. 2, 23/4 based on Ephes. 5, 32 and develops the typological relation between Adam and Christ which becomes almost an identification (III, 3/4). In this passage Christ is called: προεβύτατος τῶν αἰώνων καὶ πρῶτος τῶν ἀρχαγγέλων. Christ left his Father to cleave to his bride, the Church, and will beget virtue in the faithful (III, 8). The spiritualistic exegesis of St. Paul makes impossible a justification of lust with the words of Genesis. The position of St. Paul toward marriage and virginity is then further explained. The work ends with a grandiose hymn on Christ, born of the Virgin, and on his bride, the Church, in which M. shows his vast literary erudition. 2) De autexousio (Greek fragments and Old Slavonic version). To this title, cited by St. Jerome, the Slavonic version prefixes a De Deo et materia. A dialogue more philosophical than religious between an orthodox believer and two heretics of indistinct color on the theme of matter and the origin of evil. The adversary sees in the existence of evil an argument against creation ex nihilo and a proof of the eternity of matter. M. combats him by showing that evil comes from free will. The polemic is objective and anonymous, directed in general against (Neoplatonic) philosophy and only secondarily also against Origen (creation ab aeterno, cf. A. Vaillant, 650 ff.). 3) The attack against Origen becomes manifest and ruthless in the dialogue: Aglaophon vel de resurrectione. Aglaophon begins by interpreting the garment of skins of Gen. 3, 21 given to man after the sin as the body, and by proving resurrection without a body with Mt. 22, 23. Origen is then cited, according to whom in the spiritual bodies of the heirs of the Kingdom of God only the form of the earthly body remained. Against this M. sets out his doctrine: man was created immortal in body and in soul. The true man is neither the soul without the body nor the body without the soul but the union of both. The garment of skins is not the body but mortality, which sin has made necessary in order that it may be destroyed. For even in the baptized the roots of sin remain, from which their sins grow. Only death destroys them, and man will rise again in his original integrity. The second book develops the theme also philosophically, and the third resumes the polemic against Origen. 4) Other small works, preserved only in the Slavonic collection, are: De vita (of moral content), De cibis, De lepra, De sanguissa, with allegorical exegesis of passages of the Old Testament.

The great merit of St. M., whom Harnack (Dogmengeschichte, p. 163 ff.) calls a new Irenaeus, is without doubt that of having defended Christian realism against the dangerous tendency of Origenism toward an abstract philosophy. M. was prepared for such a struggle, possessing a profound knowledge of contemporary philosophy; syncretistic rather than Platonic (Vaillant, loc. cit. 654 against A. Jahn, Methodius platonicans, Halle 1865. Vaillant gives examples where M. combats Platonic ideas with Aristotelian distinctions). In his theology M. represents the stage of the development of orthodoxy on the eve of the Council of Nicaea. Of certain special traits, touched upon here in the exposition of the works, no attempt has so far been made to determine the provenance, whose general nature seems to be Judeo-Semitic.

Edmund Beck