HESYCHIUS
304
HESYCHIUS
maxims (1479-1544) is the work of Hesychius of
Sinai (q. v.), and not of his namesake of Jerusalem.
Neither are all the homilies (1449-80) as certainly the
work of Hesychius of Jerusalem as the sixth, the
authenticity of which is supported by an ancient
Escorial MS. (<t>, III, 20, saec. 9). Unfortunately, this
collection does not include the homily on Bethlehem
from the Turin MS., C IV4, saec. 12-13, a gem of
reUgious rhetoric worthy of furnishing the lessons for
an Office of the Church. Subjoined to the "Legend
of the Martyrdom of St. Longinus" (P. G., XCIII,
1545-60) is the testimony of "Hesychius Presbyter
of Jerusalem " himself, that he had found the MS.
in the lil^rary of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.
Metliod and Importance of his Exegetical Writings. — Judging from the extant fragments, Hesychius must have been a very prohfic writer on Biblical, partic- ularly Old-Testament, exegetics. The notice in the Greek Menology under 28 March, in which mention is made of the exposition of the entire Scriptures, can refer to none other than Hesychius of Jerusalem. In hermeneutics he adheres closely to the allegorico- mystical method of the Alexandrines; he finds in every sentence of the Bible a mystery of dogma, and reads into texts of the Old Testament the whole complexus of ideas in the New. He follows Origen in choosing for the enunciative form of exegesis the shortest possible marginal gloss (TrapaS^a-cis) . His comment on Is., xix, 1, "the Lord will ascend upon a swift cloud, and will enter into Egj'pt", is "Christ in the arms of the Virgin". Water represents always to him "the mystical water" (of baptism), and bread, "the my.stical table" (of the Eucharist). It is this hj^ier-allegorical and glossarial method which con- stitutes the peculiar characteristic of his exegesis, and proves a valuable help to the Hterary critic in dis- tinguishing authentic Hesychiana from the unauthen- tic. The anti-Semitic tone of many scholia may find an explanation in local conditions; likewise geo- graphical and topographical allusions to the holy places of Palestine would be expected of an exegete living at Jerusalem. The importance of Hesychius for textual criticism lies in the fact that many of his paraphrases echo the wording of his exemplar, and still more in his frequent citation of variants from other columns of the Hexapla or Tetrapla, particu- larly readings of Sjinmachus, whereby he has saved many precious texts. He is likewise of importance in Biblical stichometry. His "Capitula" (P. G., XCIII, 1345-86) and commentaries show the early Christian division into chapters of at least the Twelve Minor Prophets and Isaias, which corresponds to the inner sequence of ideas of the respective books far better than the modern division. In the case of cer- tain separate books, Hesychivis has inavigurated an original stichic division of the Sacred Text — for the "citizen of the Holy City" (avioiroXir?;?) cited in the oldest MSS. of catenae ot the Psalms, and the Canti- cles, is none other than Hesychius of Jerusalem. It has been discovered by Mercati that in some MSS. the initial letter of each division according to Hesychius is indicated in colour. Hesychius must have been generally known as an authority, for he is quoted simply as Hagiopolites, or, elsewhere, by the equally laconic expression "him of Jenisalem" (ToO'ItpoffoXiS/iui/).
Separate Commentaries. — It is certain that Hesy- chius was the author of consecutive commentaries on the Psalms, the Canticle of Canticles, the Twelve Minor Prophets, Isaias, and Luke (Chapter i?). His name occurs in catenae in connexion with an occa- sional scholium to texts from other books (Genesis, I and II Kings. Ezechiel, Daniel, Matthew, John, Acts, the Catholic Epistles), which, however, apart from the question of their authenticity, are not neces- sarily taken from complete commentaries on the respective books. Likewise the citations from Hesy- chius in ascetic fiorilegia, as in Bodl. Barocc. 143,
saec. 12, are taken from exegetical works. The most
perplexing problem is the connexion of Hesychius
with the commentary on the Psalms attributed to
him. The numerous citations from Hesychius in
catenae of the Psalms and the exegetical w'orks on the
Psalms handed down over his name, particularly in
Oxford and Venice MSS., are so widely at variance
with each other as to preclude any question of mere
variations in different transcriptions of one original;
either Hesychius was the author of several commen-
taries on the Psalms or the above-mentioned com-
mentaries are to be attributed to several authors
named Hesychius. As a matter of fact Spanish
MSS. clearly distinguish between Hesychius the
Monk, author of commentaries on the Psalms and
Canticles, and Hesychius the Prie.st. In 1900 the
present wTiter explained the commentary on the
Psalms included among the works of St. Athanasius
(P. G., XXVII, 649-1344) as the glossary of Hesy-
chius issued over a pseudonym. This hypothesis has
since been confirmed by further evidence (Escorial,
V^, I, 2, sa>c. 12).
A complete commentary of Hesychius on the Canticles of the Old and New Testament, which are known to have constituted a distinct book in the early Christian Bible, is preserved in MS.; any edition of this must be based on the Bodl. Miscell., 5. saec. 9. Another codex which would have been particularly valuable for this edition and for the solution of the Hesychius problem, the Turin MS. B, VII, 30, saec. S-9, has unfortunately been destroyed by fire. The Mechitarists of San Lazzaro have in their possession an Armenian commentary on Job over the name of Hesychius of Jerusalem. The scholia of Hesychius to the Twelve Minor Prophets are preserved in six MSS. at Rome, Paris, and Moscow, and await publi- cation. His commentary on Isaias was discovered in 1900 in the anonjTnous marginal notes to an eleventh- century Vatican MS. (Vatic, 347) by the i)resent writer, who published it with a facsimile; the authen- ticity of these 2S60 scholia was later confirmed by a ninth-century Bodleian MS. (Miscell., 5).
Scholia to the Magnificat, in the catena- of Canticles, and MSS. at Paris and Mount Athos establish beyond doubt the fact that Hesychius left a conunciitary on the Gospel of St. Luke, at least on the first chapter. For evidence as to the authenticity of the "Harmony of the Gospels" (P. G., XCIII, 1391-1448) the trea- tise on the Resurrection must first be examined. This is extant in two forms, a longer (imder Gregory of Nyssa, in P. G., XLA'I, 627-52) and a shorter, the latter an abridgment of the former and as yet un- published. In tenth-, eleventh-, and twelfth-century MSS. of the former, to "Hesychius Presliyter of Jerusalem" is added the further title "the theo- logian ". The works of Hesychius of Jerusidem so far published are to be found in P. G., XCIII, 787-1.560 (see also loc. cit., 781-88 for the older literary and historical notices), Faulhaber, "Hesychii Hieroso- lymitani interpretatio Isaiae prophetsr nunc primum in lucem edita " (Freiburg. 1900). and Jagic, " Ein unedierter griechischer P.«almenkommentar (Vienna, 1906), also Mercati, "Studi e Testi".
Bardenhewer. Patrologij, tr. Shahan (Freiburg im Br., 1909): Faulhaber. Eiy^f u-irtvolle Oxforder Handschrift in Theol. QuartaUchrift (TiibinKon, 1901); Karo and Lietzmann, Catcnarum gra;carum catalogua (Gottingen, 1902).
Micn.\EL Faulhaber.
Hesychius ot Sinai, a priest and monk of the Order of St. Basil in the Tliorn-bush (/Sdros) monastery on Mt. Sinai, and ascetic author of the Byzantine period in literature. Nothing definite is known concerning his career or the exact time at which he lived. Only a few paltry fragments of the literary remains of this almost completely forgotten author have been pre- serv'ed, and they have still to be collected and separ- ately criticized. In manuscripts, as a rule, he is given
