Epiphanius of Salamis

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Vested as a bishop in omophorion, sometimes holding a scroll
ControversyIconoclasm

Epiphanius of Salamis (

Byzantine Iconoclasts were actually by him. Regardless of this he was clearly strongly against some contemporary uses of images in the church.[3]

Life

Epiphanius was either born into a

Greek, and Latin, and was called by Jerome on that account Pentaglossos ("Five tongued").[5]

His reputation for learning prompted his nomination and

Paulinus, who had the support of Rome, over that of Meletius of Antioch, who was supported by the Eastern Churches. In 382 he was present at the Council of Rome
, again upholding the cause of Paulinus.

Origenist controversy and death

Main article:
Origenist Crises

During a visit to Palestine in 394 or 395, while preaching in Jerusalem, he attacked

John against Jerome
and Epiphanius. Epiphanius fuelled this conflict by ordaining a priest for Jerome's monastery at Bethlehem, thus trespassing on John's jurisdiction. This dispute continued during the 390s, in particular in the literary works by Rufinus and Jerome attacking one another.

Engraving by Jan Luyken depicting Epiphanius and the return of his body to Constantinople

In 399, the dispute took on another dimension, when the Bishop of Alexandria, Theophilus, who had initially supported

Chrysostom: in 402 he summoned a council in Constantinople, and invited those supportive of his anti-Origenist views. Epiphanius, by this time nearly 80, was one of those summoned, and began the journey to Constantinople. However, when he realised he was being used as a tool by Theophilus against Chrysostom, who had given refuge to the monks persecuted by Theophilus and who were appealing to the emperor, Epiphanius started back to Salamis, only to die on the way home in 403.[8]

The curtain incident

Letter LI in Jerome's letters gives Jerome's Latin translation, made at Epiphanius' request, of his letter, originally in Greek from c. 394, "From Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, in Cyprus, to John, Bishop of Jerusalem" (see previous section for wider context). The final section covers the often quoted incident of the curtain, which unlike other passages attributed to Epiphanius and quoted by the Iconoclasts, is accepted as authentic by modern scholars:[9]

9. Moreover, I have heard that certain persons have this grievance against me: When I accompanied you to the holy place called Bethel, there to join you in celebrating the Collect, after the use of the Church, I came to a villa called Anablatha and, as I was passing, saw a lamp burning there. Asking what place it was, and learning it to be a church, I went in to pray, and found there a curtain hanging on the doors of the said church, dyed and embroidered. It bore an image either of Christ or of one of the saints; I do not rightly remember whose the image was. Seeing this, and being loth that an image of a man should be hung up in Christ’s church contrary to the teaching of the Scriptures, I tore it asunder and advised the custodians of the place to use it as a winding sheet for some poor person. They, however, murmured, and said that if I made up my mind to tear it, it was only fair that I should give them another curtain in its place. As soon as I heard this, I promised that I would give one, and said that I would send it at once. Since then there has been some little delay, due to the fact that I have been seeking a curtain of the best quality to give to them instead of the former one, and thought it right to send to Cyprus for one. I have now sent the best that I could find, and I beg that you will order the presbyter of the place to take the curtain which I have sent from the hands of the Reader, and that you will afterwards give directions that curtains of the other sort—opposed as they are to our religion—shall not be hung up in any church of Christ. A man of your uprightness should be careful to remove an occasion of offence unworthy alike of the Church of Christ and of those Christians who are committed to your charge. Beware of Palladius of Galatia—a man once dear to me, but who now sorely needs God's pity—for he preaches and teaches the heresy of Origen; and see to it that he does not seduce any of those who are intrusted to your keeping into the perverse ways of his erroneous doctrine. I pray that you may fare well in the Lord.[10]

Writings

Panarion

Main article: Panarion

His best-known book is the Panarion (from Latin panarium, "bread basket" < panis, "bread"), also known as Adversus Haereses, "Against Heresies", presented as a book of antidotes for those bitten by the serpent of heresy. Written between 374 and 377, it forms a handbook for dealing with the arguments of heretics.

11th century depiction of St. Epiphanius in Saint Sophia Cathedral, Kiev

It lists, and refutes, 80

Messalians.[11]

While Epiphanius often let his zeal come before facts – he admits on one occasion that he writes against the Origenists-based only on hearsay (Panarion, Epiphanius 71) – the Panarion is a valuable source of information on the Christian Church of the fourth century. It is also an important source regarding the early Jewish gospels such as the Gospel according to the Hebrews circulating among the Ebionites and the Nazarenes, as well as the followers of Cerinthus and Merinthus.[12]

One unique feature of the Panarion is in the way that Epiphanius compares the various heretics to different poisonous beasts, going so far as to describe in detail the animal's characteristics, how it produces its poison, and how to protect oneself from the animal's bite or poison.

Gnostics to a particularly dreaded snake "with no fangs." The Ebionites, a Christian sect that followed Jewish law, were described by Epiphanius as "a monstrosity with many shapes, who practically formed the snake-like shape of the mythical many-headed Hydra in himself." In all, Epiphanius describes fifty animals, usually one per sect.[14]

Another feature of the Panarion is the access its earlier sections provide to lost works, notably Justin Martyr's work on heresies, the Greek of Irenaeus' Against Heresies, and Hippolytus' Syntagma.[15] The Panarion was first translated into English in 1987 and 1990.

Other works

His earliest known work is the

On Weights and Measures (περὶ μέτρων καὶ στάθμων). It was composed in Constantinople for a Persian priest, in 392,[16] and survives in Syriac, Armenian, and Georgian translations (this last is found in Shatberd ms 1141 along with Physiologus and De Gemmis).[17] The first section discusses the canon of the Old Testament and its versions, the second of measures and weights, and the third, the geography of Palestine. The texts appear not to have been given a polish but consist of rough notes and sketches, as Allen A. Shaw, a modern commentator, concluded; nevertheless Epiphanius' work on metrology was important in the history of measurement
.

Another work, On the Twelve Gems (De Gemmis), survives in a number of fragments, the most complete of which is the Georgian.[18] The letter written by Epiphanius to John, Bishop of Jerusalem, in 394 and preserved in Jerome's translation, is discussed above.[19] The collection of homilies traditionally ascribed to a "Saint Epiphanius, bishop" are dated in the late fifth or sixth century and are not connected with Epiphanius of Salamis by modern scholars.[20]

Such was Epiphanius's reputation for learning that the Physiologus, the principal source of medieval bestiaries, came to be widely falsely attributed to him.[21]

Works

Notes

  1. ^ (in Greek) Ὁ Ἅγιος Ἐπιφάνιος Ἐπίσκοπος Κωνσταντίας καὶ Ἀρχιεπίσκοπος Κύπρου. 12 Μαΐου. ΜΕΓΑΣ ΣΥΝΑΞΑΡΙΣΤΗΣ.
  2. ISBN 978-0919812147
    .
  3. ^ Kitzinger, 92–93, 92 quoted
  4. Monastery of Epiphanius near Thebes, Egypt was founded by an anchorite named Epiphanius towards the end of the sixth century; it was explored by an expedition from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
    , 1912–14.
  5. ^ Ruf 3.6
  6. ^ Salamis was also known as Constantia after Constantine II.
  7. ^ Part 9, Letter LI. From Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, in Cyprus, to John, Bishop of Jerusalem (c. 394), http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001051.htm.
  8. ^ Frances Young with Andrew Teal, From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and its Background, (2nd edn, 2004), pp202-3
  9. ^ Kitzinger, 92–93 and long note
  10. ^ "Philip Schaff: NPNF2-06. Jerome: The Principal Works of St. Jerome - Christian Classics Ethereal Library". www.ccel.org.
  11. ^ Andrew Louth, 'Palestine', in Frances Young, Lewis Ayres and Andrew Young, eds, The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature, (2010), p286
  12. ^ Epiphanius, Panarion, 30 iii 7
  13. ISBN 978-0-415-38650-0
    .
  14. doi:10.2143/jecs.60.1.2035279
    .
  15. ^ Andrew Louth, 'Palestine', in Frances Young, Lewis Ayres and Andrew Young, eds, The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature, (2010), 286
  16. ^ Allen A. Shaw, "On Measures and Weights by Epiphanius" National Mathematics Magazine 11.1 (October 1936: 3–7).
  17. ^ English translation is Dean (1935)
  18. ^ Frances Young with Andrew Teal, From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and its Background, (2nd edn, 2004), p201
  19. ^ Ep 51, available at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206.v.LI.html
  20. ^ Alvar Erikson, Sancti Epiphani Episcopi Interpretatio Evangelorum (Lund) 1938, following Germain Morin.
  21. ^ Frances Young with Andrew Teal, From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and its Background, (2nd edn, 2004), p202
  22. ^ Saint Augustine (of Hippo), Arianism and Other Heresies, p.22 (note 10), the University of Michigan Libraries: Quote: For a discussion on the question of the authorship of the Anacephalaiosis, see L.G. Müller, The De Haeresibus of Saint Augustine: A Translation with an Introduction and Commentary (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1956), 23–25. Contemporary scholars are generally in agreement that the Anacephalaiosis is not the work of Epiphanius, [although attributed unto him]. See K. Holl, "Die Unechtheit der Anakephalaiosis," Texte und Untersuchungen 36.2 (Leipzig, 1910), 95–98

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Epiphanius of Salamis.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Epiphanius of Salamis". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Epiphanius_of_Salamis&oldid=1216743049"