PATRISTIC LITERATURE

body of literature that comprises those works, excluding the New Testament, written by Christians before the 8th century AD. Patristic is derived from the Greek and Latin word pater (father) and refers to the works of the Church Fathers. Most patristic literature is in Greek or Latin, but much survives in Syriac and other Near Eastern languages. The works of the Apostolic Fathers, a collection of short and unpretentious Greek writings largely concerned with Christian conduct, contain the earliest patristic literature. The oldest of these works, including the Letter to the Church of Corinth, by Clement of Rome, and possibly part of a manual of church order called the Didache, stem from the last decades of the 1st century AD and antedate some books of the New Testament. Accounts of martyrdoms are the most moving early patristic writings. The finest of them, the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas, was written in Carthage in about 202 by the Christian noblewoman Perpetua as she awaited execution for her refusal to apostatize. Apocryphal accounts of Christ's life and the careers of the Apostles flourished in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Later Christian art drew on their romantic narratives to depict such things as the birth of Mary and the adventures of the apostle Peter. By the middle of the 2nd century AD Christians wrote to justify their faith to the Roman government and to refute Gnostic ideas they considered heretical. The principal writer then was Justin Martyr, a Christian teacher put to death in Rome in about 165. Beginning with Justin, who wrote in Greek, Christians were increasingly sophisticated in their appropriation of the rhetorical and philosophical heritage of Greco-Roman culture. In this they relied on earlier Jewish literature written in Greek, particularly the works of Philo (c. 15 BCc. AD 50), a philosopher who interpreted the Torah symbolically along Platonic lines. Christian appropriation of Greek philosophy came to fruition in the writings of Origen (c. 185c. 254), a Greek author from Alexandria, whose treatise, On First Principles, was the first coherent and systematic account of the main doctrines of Christian theology. Origen was the early church's greatest biblical scholar, and his allegorical method of interpretation dominated Christian exegesis until the Reformation. The first important Latin Christian author, Tertullian of Carthage (c. 160c. 225), set forth the main lines Latin theology would follow in writings of unexcelled stylistic brilliance. The first Council of Nicaea, in 325, is the great watershed in patristic literature. In terms of Christian theology the council, the first convocation of Christian leaders theoretically from throughout the world, marks the beginning of an era, extending through the rest of the patristic period, during which general church councils sought to define Christian dogma ever more precisely. Socially and politically, the Council of Nicaea marks the point at which Christianity ceased to be the religion of a persecuted minority and became the Roman Empire's favoured religion. The principal author at the time of the first Council of Nicaea, a Greek writer, Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260c. 340), associated himself with Constantine, the first Christian emperor. Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History, published in its final edition about 323, is the first known history of the early church and its literature. Pioneering use of extensive documentation makes the Ecclesiastical History especially valuable. For slightly more than 100 years after Nicaea, patristic literature enjoyed its golden age. Theologians, most of them writing in Greek, worked out, after a long debate, what was to be the normative Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Chief among them were Athanasius (c. 293373), the tenacious bishop of Alexandria, and the three Cappadocian Fathers, so called from their native province in Anatolia: Basil the Great (c. 330379), his brother Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335c. 394), and their friend Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 330c. 389). Athanasius and Basil contributed as authors to the development of Christian monasticism. Athanasius popularized it with his Life of St. Antony, the idealized biography of St. Anthony of Egypt, and Basil composed what was to become the rule of life for Eastern Orthodox monks. Preachers and writers during this golden age achieved the highest standards of eloquence. Gregory of Nazianzus and John Chrysostom ( c. 347407) in Greek and Ambrose of Milan (c. 339397) and Augustine of Hippo (354430) in Latin were consummate orators, masters of the most respected and popular art form of their time. Ephraem of Nisibis (c. 306373) composed superb Christian verse in Syriac. Jerome (c. 347c. 420), the period's greatest man of letters, was largely responsible for the careful and eloquent Vulgate translation of the Bible from its original languages into Latin. The most influential writer of the patristic period was Augustine of Hippo. His theological treatises pervasively shaped the common tradition of Roman Catholics and Protestants. His sustained meditation on God's grace, the Confessions, with its psychologically acute autobiography, is the patristic work most accessible to modern readers. His City of God, a treatise occasioned by the shattering news of the Visigothic sack of Rome in 410, initiated Christian philosophical reflection on history. Two Greek theologians, Theodore of Mopsuestia (c. 350c. 428) and Cyril of Alexandria (c. 375444), set forth influential alternative approaches to the problem of how Christ could be both God and man. Theodore of Mopsuestia was the greatest biblical exegete after Origen, whose allegorism he rejected. The isolation of cultural traditions and characteristically medieval concerns mark later patristic literature. Maximus the Confessor (c. 580662), a Byzantine theologian, exemplifies typically Byzantine concerns with icons and with mystical contemplation. His contemporary Pope Gregory I (540604), the last significant Latin patristic author, reluctantly assumed more immediately practical concerns. Gregory helped consolidate Benedictine monasticism and the papacy, the two stable and enduring institutions in an otherwise chaotic time. The rise of Islam effectively closed the patristic era by ending what little cultural unity remained in the Mediterranean world. body of literature that comprises those works, excluding the New Testament, written by Christians before the 8th century AD. Patristic literature is generally identified today with the entire Christian literature of the early Christian centuries, irrespective of its orthodoxy or the reverse. Taken literally, however, patristic literature should denote the literature emanating from the Fathers of the Christian Church, the Fathers being those respected bishops and other teachers of exemplary life who witnessed to and expounded the orthodox faith in the early centuries. This would be in line with the ancient practice of designating as the Fathers prominent church teachers of past generations who had taken part in ecumenical councils or whose writings were appealed to as authoritative. Almost everywhere, however, this restrictive definition has been abandoned. There are several reasons why a more elastic usage is to be welcomed. One is that some of the most exciting Christian authors, such as Origen, were of questionable orthodoxy, and othersTertullian, for exampledeliberately left the church. Another is that the undoubtedly orthodox Fathers themselves cannot be properly understood in isolation from their doctrinally unorthodox contemporaries. Most decisive is the consideration that early Christian literature exists, and deserves to be studied, as a whole and that much will be lost if any sector is neglected because of supposed doctrinal shortcomings. Additional reading The most important texts on the Church Fathers are Bertold Altaner, Patrology (1960; originally published in German, 1938); F.L. Cross, The Early Christian Fathers (1960); and Johannes Quasten, Patrology, 3 vol. (195060, reprinted 1983), continued by Angelo Di Berardino (ed.), Patrology: The Golden Age of Latin Patristic Literature from the Council of Nicea to the Council of Chalcedon (1986; originally published in Italian, 1978). Other works include Hans von Campenhausen, The Fathers of the Greek Church (1959, reissued 1963; originally published in German, 1955), and The Fathers of the Latin Church (1964, reprinted 1969; originally published in German, 1960); Frances M. Young, From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and Its Background (1983), on the chief Greek Fathers from 325 to 451; and Boniface Ramsey, Beginning to Read the Fathers (1985). See also the volumes in the series Message of the Fathers of the Church (1983 ). The Rev. John N.D. Kelly