METODIUS of OLYMPUS, saint. — Of his person and life it can be said with certainty only that he lived in Lycia and died a bishop and martyr ad extremum novissimae persecutionis, that is, around 312 (St. Jerome, De viris ill., 83; the falsity of the other report, sive ut alii affirmant sub Decio et Valeriano, can be demonstrated with certainty). Olympus is commonly named as his episcopal see, on the authority of Jerome (Olympi Lyciae... episcopus) and 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, too, is shrouded in obscurity. St. Jerome gives a brief list, but Eusebius says nothing of them in the Hist. eccl., although he knew the author, as is proved by a passage from 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 may explain his silence: he detests Origen’s adversary. But there is still another difficulty. In the De praeparatione evang., VII, 22, Eusebius cites a passage taken from M.’s book, De autexousio, and names as its author a certain Maximus, whom his Hist. eccl. places near Irenaeus in time. The problem becomes still more complicated: the same passage, greatly 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 attributed to Origen at a very early date. The Philosophia of Gregory Nazianzenus and Basil repeats Eusebius’s citation and judges the author to have been Origen. Vaillant, in his introduction to the edition of the De autexousio (PO 22, 5, 684 ff.), seeks to explain this strange situation also by hypothesizing a Christian school around St. M., where the themes could have been anonymous and shared to a certain extent. If this is true, the dialogical form of all St. M.’s works would not be merely a literary imitation of Plato.
1) The only work preserved in its entirety in the original Greek bears the title: Convicium vel de castitate. Ten young women gathered in the garden of Arete beneath the “Agnos” tree (chaste tree) praise virginity in ten speeches. To introduce somewhat the content of this work, the first on this subject in Christian literature, the first three speeches are briefly analyzed here. The first discusses the development of the idea of virginity from the beginning until 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 “similitud,” which is φθορᾶς ἀποφυγή. The second speech defends marriage (Gen. 1:28), although virginity surpasses it as the moon surpasses the stars. Virginity already anticipates here the erunt sicut angeli of Mt. 22:30 (II, 7). The third speech offers an allegorical exegesis of Gen. 2:23–24, based on Ephes. 5:32, and develops the typological relationship 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 in order to cleave to his bride, the Church, and will generate virtue in the faithful (III, 8). St. Paul’s spiritualizing exegesis makes it impossible to justify lust by the words of Genesis. St. Paul’s position toward marriage and virginity is then explained further. The work ends with a grand hymn to Christ, born of the Virgin, and to his bride, the Church, in which M. displays his broad 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 Christian and two heretics of indistinct coloration on the subject of matter and the origin of evil. The adversary sees in the existence of evil an argument against creation ex nihilo and proof of the eternity of matter. M. combats him by showing that evil proceeds from free will. The polemic is objective and anonymous, directed generally against (Neoplatonic) philosophy and only secondarily against Origen as well (creation ab aeterno, cf. A. Vaillant, 650 ff.). 3) The attack against Origen becomes explicit and merciless in the dialogue Aglaophon vel de resurrectione. Aglaophon begins by interpreting the skin garment of Gen. 3:21, given to man after the sin, as the body, and proving resurrection without the body from 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 forth his doctrine: man was created immortal in body and soul. The true man is neither the soul without the body nor the body without the soul, but the union of both. The skin garment is not the body but mortality, which sin made necessary so that it might 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 philosophically as well, 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 from the Old Testament.
The great merit of St. M., whom Harnack (Dogmengeschichte, p. 163 ff.) calls a new Irenaeus, is undoubtedly that he defended Christian realism against the dangerous tendency of Origenism toward an abstract philosophy. M. was prepared for this struggle, possessing a profound knowledge of contemporary philosophy, which was syncretistic rather than Platonic (Vaillant, loc. cit. 654, against A. Jahn, Methodius platonicans, Halle 1865. Vaillant gives examples in which 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. With regard to certain special features, mentioned here in the exposition of the works, no attempt has so far been made to determine their provenance, whose general character appears to be Judeo-Semitic.
BISL.: N. Bonwetsch, Methodica (G.C.S. 27), Leipzig 1917 (for Bonwetsch’s textual criticism, V. P. Heseler, in Byz. Neugr. Jahrbücher, 10 [1932–34], pp. 325–40); A. Vaillant, Le De autexousio... Version slave et Texte grec (PO 22, 5), Paris 1930. Translations: A. Biamonti, M. d'O., Lanciano 1924 (translation of selected passages, especially from the Symposium, with introduction); J. Farges, Meth. du Libre Arbitre, Paris 1929. Articles and studies: N. Bonwetsch, Die Theologie des Methodius, Göttingen 1901; E. Buonaiuti, Ethics and Eschatology of M. d'O., in Riv. trimestr. di studi filos. e rel., 3 (1922), pp. 272–98; Aimé Puech, Histoire de la littérat. gr. chrétienne, II, Paris 1928, p. 511 ff.; J. Farges, Les idées morales et religieuses de M. d'O., Paris 1929; I. Martin, Symposium, Die Geschichte einer literarischen Form, Paderborn 1931, p. 285 ff. Edmund Beck