FATHERS
10
FATHERS
saved Rome from Attila, and the Romans from Gen-
seric. He couki be unbending in the enunciation of
principle; he was condescending in the condoning of
breaches of discipline for the sake of peace, and he was
a skilful diplomatist. His sermons and the dogmatic
letters in his large correspondence show him to us as
the most lucid of all theologians. He is clear in his
expression, not because he is superficial, but because he
has thought clearly and deeply. He steers between
Nestorianism and Eutychianism, not by using subtle
distinctions or elaborate arguments, but by stating
plain definitions in accurate words. He condemned
Monothelitism by anticipation. His style is careful,
with metrical cadences. Its majestic rhythms and
its sonorous closes have invested the Latin language
with a new splendour and dignity.
E. (1) In the sixth century the large correspondence of Pope Hormisdas is of the highest interest. That century closes with St. Gregory the Great, whose cele- brated "Registrum "exceeds in volume many times over the collections of the letters of other early popes. The Epistles are of great variety and throw light on the varied interests of the great pope's life and the varied events in the East and West of his time. His " Morals on the Book of Job " is not a literal commentary, but pretends only to illustrate the moral sense underlying the text. With all the strangeness it presents to mod- ern notions, it is a work full of wisdom and instruction. The remarks of St. Gregory on the spiritual life and on contemplation are of special interest. As a theolo- gian he is original only in that he combines all the tra- ditional theology of the West without adding to it. He commonly follows Augustine as a theologian, a commentator and a preacher. His sermons are ad- mirably practical; they are models of what a good sermon should be. After St. Gregory there are some great popes whose letters are worthy of study, such as Nicholas I and John VIII; but these and the many other late writers of the West belong properly to the medieval period. St. Gregory of Tours is certainly medieval, but the learned Bede is quite patristic. His great history is the most faithful and perfect history to be found in the early centuries. (2) In the East, the latter half of the fifth century is very barren. The sLxth century is not much better. The importance of Leontius of Byzantium (died c. 543) for the history of dogma has only lately been realized. Poets and hagi- ographers, chroniclers, canonists, and ascetical writers succeed each other. Catenae by way of commentaries are the order of the day. St. Maximus Confessor, An- astasius of Mount Sinai, and Andrew of Ca-sarea must be named. The first of these commented on the works of the pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, which had probably first seen the light towards the end of the fifth century. St. John of Damascus (c. 750) closes the patristic period with his polemics against heresies, his exegetical and ascetical writings, his beautiful hymns, and above all his "Fountain of Wisdom", which is a compendium of patristic theology and a kind of anticipation of scholasticism. Indeed, the "Summse Theologicte" of the Middle Ages were founded on the "Sentences" of Peter Lombard, who had taken the skeleton of his work from this last of the Greek Fathers.
Characteristics op Patristic Writings. — (a) Commentaries. — It has been seen that the literal school of exegesis had its home at Antioch, while the allegori- cal school was Alexandrian, and the entire West, on the whole, followed the allegorical method, mingling literalism with it in varinus degrees. The suspicion of Arianism has lost to us the fourth-century writers of the Antidelicnc scIukiI, such as Theodore of Heraclea anil JMiscliius of iMncsa.aiid tlicrliargc of Nestorianism lias rauscd ( he roiiinicniarics of Dimlorus and Theo- dore (if Mo|)sucstia (for the tnost ]):irl ) to disappear. The Alexandrian school has lost yc't more heavily, for little of the great Origen remains except in fragments
and in unreliable versions. The great Antiochenes,
Chrysostom and Theodoret, have a real grasp of the
sense of the sacred text. They treat it with reverence
and love, and their explanations are of deep value, be-
cause the language of the New Testament was their
own tongue, so that we moderns cannot afford to
neglect their comments. On the contrary, Origen,
the moulder of the allegorizing type of commentary,
who had inherited the Philonic tradition of the Alex-
andrian Jews, was essentially irreverent to the in-
spired authors. The Old Testament was to him full
of errors, lies, and blasphemies, so far as the letter was
concerned, and his defence of it against the pagans,
the Gnostics, and especially the Marcionites, was to
point only to the spiritual meaning. Theoretically he
distinguished a triple sense, the somatic, the psychic,
and the pneumatic, following St. Paul's trichotomy;
but in practice he mainly gives the spiritual, as op-
posed to the corporal or literal.
St. Augustine sometimes defends the Old Testa- ment against the Manichsans in the same style, and occasionally in a most unconvincing manner, but with great moderation and restraint. In his "De Genesi ad litteram" he has evolved a far more effective method, with his usual brilliant originality, and he shows that the objections brought against the truth of the first chapters of the book invariably rest upon the baseless assumption that the objector has found the true meaning of the text. But Origen applied his method, though partially, even to the New Testament, and regarded the Evangelists as sometimes false in the letter, but as saving the truth in the hidden spiritual meaning. In this point the good feeling of Christians prevented his being followed. But the brilliant ex- ample he gave, of running riot in the fantastic exegesis which his method encouraged, had an unfortunate in- fluence. He is fond of giving a variety of applications to a single text, and his promise to hold nothing but what can be proved from Scripture becomes illusory when he shows by example that any part of Scripture may mean anything he pleases. The reverent temper of later writers, and especially of the Westerns, pre- ferred to represent as the true meaning of the sacred writer the allegory which appeared to them to be the most obvious. St. Ambrose and St. Augustine in their beautiful works on the Psalms rather spiritual- ize, or moralize, than allegorize, and their imaginative interpretations are chiefly of events, actions, num- bers, etc. But almost all allegorical interpretation is so arbitrary and depends so much on the caprice of the exegete that it is difficult to conciliate it with rev- erence, however one may be dazzled by the beauty of much of it. An alternative way of defending the Old Testament was excogitated by the ingenious author of the pseudo-Clementines; he asserts that it has been depraved and interpolated. St. Jerome's learning has made his exegesis unique; he frequently gives al- ternative explanations and refers to the authors who have adopted them. From the middle of the fifth century onwards, second-hand commentaries are uni- versal in East and West, and originality almost en- tirely disappears. Andrew of Csesarea is perhaps an exception, for he commented on a book which was scarcely at all read in the East, the Apocalypse.
Discussions of method are not wanting. Clement of Alexandria gives "traditional methods", the ht- eral, typical, moral, and prophetical. The tradition is obviously from Rabbinism. We must admit that it has in its favour the practice of St. Matthew and St. Paul. Even more than Origen, St. Augustine theorized on this subject. In his "De Doctrina Christiana " he gives elaborate rules of exegesis. Else- where he distinguishes four senses of Scripture: his- torical, a'tiological (croniiinic), analogical (where N. T. explains (). T.), and allegorical ("De Util. Cred.", H; cf. "De Vera Rel.", 50). The book of rules com- posed by the Donatist 'Tichonius has an analogy in the
