The Tritheism of the sixth century has not been widely studied. John Philoponus, the greatest exponent of the theory, developed the idea by applying Aristotelian realism to the doctrine of the Trinity and concluded that in the Trinity there are three hypostases and three natures, whence comes the name for those who hold this position: “Tri-theists,” since they divide the one nature and substance of God into three. This article sheds light on the earliest stage of the development of Tritheism beginning in the year 557, when we can date the first appearance of John Askotzanges in the sources, and goes up until the first Syndocticon, the agreement reached between the Tritheists and the Theodosians at Constantinople in the beginning of the year 567. After the death of Theodosius in 566, Tritheism no longer remained merely a local reality in Constantinople but spilled over the confines of the Imperial capital and spread throughout the East, especially in Egypt.

The study of the reception of Irenaeus of Lyons in the Liber de sectis hereticorum of Baldwin of Canterbury (+ 1191) illuminates three aspects of the author’s context: (1) the theological and ecclesial context (the problem of Catharism and of Nihilism); (2) the context of the libraries in which Baldwin could have read the Adversus Haereses; (3) the context of the manuscript tradition of the Adversus Haereses. Here a study of the titles of the chapters and of the textual variants allows us greater precision concerning the manuscripts which we know in a stemma codicum. Our conclusion is that the work of Baldwin is the only witness which we have to the manuscript of Canterbury which, in turn, is shown to have a closer kinship with the manuscripts of the family of manuscripts preserved in Lyons, especially with the Arundel manuscript.

Following the example of classical literature, Christian texts of the fourth century portray dreams of pregnant mothers. In such dreams, the mother sees her son or daughter, and knows the name of the infant and the great future for which the infant is destined. The dreams of Emmelia, Nonna and Monica are described in the writings of their sons (Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus and Augustine, respectively). Thanks to her visions and dreams about her child, each mother becomes a mediatrix of God.

Vat. gr. 1196 is a miscellaneous manuscript that contains canonical, synodal and heresiological texts from different authors. These adnotationes offer its own foliation and contents.

The article outlines some aspects of the reception of the so-called four Father of the Latin Church in Renaissance Europe, as emerging in the prefaces of their Opera omnia edited in Basel during the end of the 15th and the first half of the 16th century. Through selected passages from the prefaces, the article discusses (§ 1) the relevance of these sources of old Christianity to the cultural and spiritual renewal many humanistic scholars aimed at; (§ 2) the importance of print in promoting the formation and circulation of patristic editions; finally (§ 3) it illustrates the philological approach to late Antique Christian texts, which was innovative in comparison to former methods of their transmissions and is still very instructive to this day.

The present essay, starting from a close examination of the available sources, intends to retrace the historical dynamics of the controversy between Stephen of Rome and Cyprian of Carthage about single baptism. The analysis highlights more clearly than other studies the need to justify, because of the urgent context of the schism of Novatian, the legitimacy of the different traditions of the Churches, something previously taken for granted. The difficulty of this enterprise, combined with the imponderable human factor, represented by the personalities of the protagonists, generates misunderstandings. A further factor is the decisive role played by Dionysius of Alexandria in resolving the conflict, which confirmed the preferential relationship between Rome and Alexandria.

The aim of the paper is to reconsider the content of first two Visions of the Shepherd of Hermas and to decode some ficticious elements offered by the author at the beginning of his work. The study takes into consideration some recent textual discoveries concerning the first sentence of the Shepherd.

Three major reshuffles delineate two families (α and β) within the manuscript tradition of the Commentary on Matthew by Hilary of Poitiers. In the first two cases (3, 2; 9, 7-9), J. Doignon in his critical edition (SCh 254 and 258) favored the text of the α family, judging that the β family generally attests to numerous revisions intended to suppress difficult lectiones. In the third case, on the other hand, he adopted the short text of the β family, thus demoting two short passages in 33, 5 specific to the α family. This article shows that on the one hand the language of these passages is attributable to Hilary and on the other their content fits perfectly with his exegesis. It thus argues for their authenticity.

Peristephanon X, a hymn on the martyrdom of St. Romanus of Antioch, may be considered the masterpiece of Prudentius’ poetry on the Christian martyrs. Romanus is represented as a Christian hero. As a rhetor, he defends his faith against paganism as if he were a lawyer; as a martyr, he follows Christ’s example in accepting torture and death. Prudentius’ poetry aims to stimulate and revivify the Christian belief of his audience.

There are three basic approaches to the question of how Augustine, in his anti-Pelagian writings, conceives of the union of the human and the divine in Christ. Some have argued for a dynamic notion of Christological union as the mutual presence of God and man in and by grace. Others emphasize the increasing technicality of Augustine’s description of Christ’s ontological union. Still others posit a middle ground, affirming both of the ways he speaks of the unity of Christ. However, the relationship between these forms of union has been left unexamined. The purpose of this article is therefore to explore how the two ways in which Augustine envisions Christ’s unity complement one another and to establish the logical priority of the personal incorporation of homo and Verbum over the notion of union as full divine indwelling.

The paper focuses attention on Jerome’s interpretation of Ps. 15,8 in Tractatus in psalmum 15. After an introduction dealing with the right way to translate the verse according to Hebraica veritas, which shows his philological skills, he reveals his exegesis. The opening and concluding parts of this exegesis follow closely the Origen’s Homily on Psalm 15, but the long central section about the righteous highlights the particularity of Jerome’s exegesis; he uses other interpretations of Origen’s, but subordinates them to his own concerns to achieve original results. The study offers further proofs in favour of a proposal for dating this text.

The main exegetical work of Jean Philopon, the De opificio mundi, which rehearses the literalist reading of Genesis found in the Basil of Caesarea’s Hexaemeron rather than an allegorical reading, uses a surprising hermeneutic given the general expectations of the era and in particular the Miaphysite milieu to which Philoponus belongs. This paper studies how Philoponus’ work stems from the demands of the Christological debate in which he took part, and offers an evaluation of its immediate aftermath.

This article studies Isidore of Seville’s reception of the moral theology of Gregory the Great. Examples will be offered from the Expositio in Vetus Testamentum and the second book of the Differentiae; the moral project of the Sententiae will also be explored. The most significant conclusion is that Isidore refuses to reproduce the most relevant innovations of Gregory’s teaching on charity.

In the Epistle to the Hebrews (10,1; cf. Hbr. 8,5; Col. 2,16-17) the terms σκιά and εἰκών are opposed, and most commentators have focused on the latter term, interpreting it as a Platonic allusion. If we consider in more detail the meanings of σκιά and σκιαγραφία, another interpretation appears more likely. Σκιαγραφία means “shading”, “silhouette” or “outline”, and finally “sketch” or – even better – “preliminary drawing”, “underdrawing”or “sinopia”. The last meaning is well attested in the sources at least since the late second or early third century AD and a number of passages in the Fathers alluding to the Epistle support the same conclusion. The term is common in the technical terminology of painters on wooden tablets and was a widely employed topos with different nuances according to different authors.

In Augustinian reflection, the main problem of the imago Dei is the renewal of its image through being healed from lust, so as to regain the ordo amoris destroyed by sin. Current research investigates what the gratia Christi and charity contribute to the renewal of the image of God, at the level of a marriage bond that human race was given as part of the act of creation. This emerges as a primary element, both in the original state of man and in his recovery through the gratia Christi.

The note reinterprets an important epigraphic testimony of the Ostrogoth age (ICUR I, 2794), published for the first time by Giovanni Battista de Rossi in 1894. It is a polymetric funeral eulogy commissioned among the Amali royal family, perhaps dedicated by Flavia Amala Amalafrida Theodenanda to one or more relatives, unless one wishes to identify her with one of the dedicatees of the eulogy. After a presentation of supportive material and a new edition of the text, the history of the discovery of the inscription is retraced, involving leading figures of the 19th century political and ecclesiastical culture including cardinal Vincenzo Vannutelli and H. Stevenson Jr., a pupil of de Rossi. The contribution dates the artifact between the end of the 5th century and the beginning of the 6th; it studies the hypothesis of identifying Amalafrida with one of the princesses in the family circle of King Theodoric and with the Ostrogothic wife of Flavius Maximus; it illustrates a hypothesis of the intended use of the epigraph for a funeral monument in the cemetery area of the Martyrial Basilica of S. Secondino on the Praenestina.

The present article seeks to reconstruct the Christological meaning of the verbs “creating” and “begetting” in the Synodical letter of Ancyra (358). In order to assess the teaching of this document, the first part of the article provides an overview of the Christological use of “creating” and “begetting” from the beginning of the Arian crisis up to the eve of the synod of Ancyra. The second part studies the verbs “creating” and “begetting” in the Letter of Ancyra. The synodical document makes an original and significant theological effort, purifying and complementing both the notion of “creation” (Prv 8:22) and “generation” (Prv 8:25), in order to grasp the perfect notion of the eternal birth of the Son. This understanding is confirmed by Hilary of Poitiers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the Fortunatian’s Christology and Trinitarian theology that can be deduced from his recently found work Commentarii in evangelia and, by doing so, to present a general re-evaluation of his role in the political-doctrinal clashes at the middle of the 4th century. By investigating Fortunatian’s (Trinitarian) theology in relation to the prior early Latin Trinitarian doctrine and to different heterodox traditions, and ascertaining his doctrinal standpoint in the Arian controversy of the middle of the 4th century, his doctrine reveals itself to be far more Catholic and “pro-Nicene” – though remaining deeply rooted in the Latin theological tradition – that it was regarded before.

The present study, after a quick codicological investigation of the two surviving manuscripts of the De trinitate by pseudo-Didymus, in which it is concluded that one is a copy of the other, focuses on the lexical analysis of the first book of the mutilated trinitarian treatise. By showing divergences from the authentic works of Didymus, alongside parallels with the writings of the Cappadocian Fathers, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodoret, of other late patristic authors, as well as with those of the Neoplatonic philosophers, in particular Proclus, the author concludes that the chronological position of De trinitate should not be before the end of the 5th century, and suggests a possible origin from an environment of Antiochene influence.

In De immortalitate animae Augustine is not satisfied with completing his proof of the immortality of the soul – which had been left open in the second book of the Soliloquies –; he also answers some possible objections, demonstrating that the rational soul cannot cease to exist, it cannot die, nor can it change into an irrational body or soul. Furthermore, remaining faithful to the programmatic declaration of never wanting to stray from the authority of Christ (Acad. 3, 20, 43), he specifies the ontological status of the soul by affirming that it is, in itself, mutable and therefore not of a divine nature, as Varro had argued. Nor is it a substance foreign to the body, as the Platonists claimed, because the soul has an appetitus ad corpus and, if it questions itself, it easily discovers that it desires nothing else «except to do something, to know with intelligence or with the senses, or only to live, as far as this is in its power» (nisi agendi aliquid, aut sciendi, aut sentiendi, aut tantummodo vivendi in quantum sua illi potestas est).