Gaius Marius Victorinus

Last updated

Gaius Marius Victorinus (also known as Victorinus Afer; fl. 4th century) was a Roman grammarian, rhetorician and Neoplatonic philosopher. Victorinus was African by birth and experienced the height of his career during the reign of Constantius II. He is also known for translating two of Aristotle's books from ancient Greek into Latin: the Categories and On Interpretation ( De Interpretatione ). [1] Victorinus had a religious conversion, from being a pagan to a Christian, "at an advanced old age" (c. 355).

Contents

Life

Birth place and early career

Victorinus, at some unknown point, left his home of North Africa to live permanently in Rome (hence some modern scholars have dubbed him Afer), probably for a teaching position, and had great success in his career, eventually being promoted to the lowest level of the senatorial order. That promotion probably came at the time when he received an honorific statue in the Forum of Trajan in 354. Victorinus' religious conversion to Christianity (c. 355), "at an advanced old age" according to Jerome, made a great impression on Augustine of Hippo, as recounted in Book 8 [2] of the latter's Confessions . Marius Victorinus developed a theology of predestination and justification that anticipated St. Augustine, as well as themes that we find again in the anti-Pelagian treatises of Augustine. [3] His conversion is historically important in foreshadowing the gradual conversion to Christianity of the traditionally pagan intellectual class.

Jerome, who was his student of rhetoric, [4] dedicated the following words to him:

I am not unaware that Gaius Marius Victorinus, who taught me rhetoric in Rome when I was a young man, has published commentaries on the apostle; but, versed as he was in knowledge of secular literature, he was completely ignorant of the Scriptures; and no one, no matter how eloquent, can correctly discuss something he knows nothing about. [5]

Victorinus' historical milieu

Brought up a Christian, Emperor Julian had converted to a philosophical and mystical form of paganism; and once in power upon the providential death of Constantius II, Julian attempted to reorganize the highly decentralized pagan cults, on lines analogous to the Christian Church. The emperor, wanting to purge the schools of Christian teachers, published an edict in June 362 mandating that all state appointed professors receive approval from municipal councils (the emperor's accompanying brief indicated his express disapproval of Christians lecturing on the poems of Homer or Virgil with their religion being incongruous with the religion of Homer and Virgil).

Victorinus resigned his position as official rhetor of the city of Rome, a professor of rhetoric, not an orator. He continued writing treatises on Trinitarianism to defend the adequacy of the Nicene Creed's definition of Christ the Son being "of the same substance" (Gr. homoousios ) with the Father. His writings illustrate a crucial fusion of Neo-Platonic philosophy and Christian theology, in which Victorinus effectively weaponized the former to prove and disprove arguments of the various Trinitarian debates raging during the fourth century B.C. Sister Mary Clark has noted that the fourth century was one of deep conflict between pagans and Christians, which she summarized as ‘the renaissance of pagan culture [and] the birth of Christian culture,’ at the crossroads of which stood Victorinus. [6] His importance is also seen in his large-scale use of lexical innovation (e.g. neologisms) to introduce new technical terms into Christian theological debates, especially in his translation of Greek theological and philosophical expressions (e.g. consubstantialis from ὁμοούσιος, consistentia from σύστασις, essentialitas from ὀντότης). [7]

Works

After finishing this series of works (begun probably in late 357 A.D.), he turned his hand to writing commentaries on the Pauline Epistles, the first in Latin. Although it seems from internal references that he wrote commentaries on Romans and the Corinthians letters as well, all that remains are works, with some lacunae, on Galatians, Ephesians, and Philippians (the comments from the first 16 verses of this latter are missing).

We are fairly well informed on his previous works, mostly texts for his teaching areas of grammar and rhetoric. His most important works from the standpoint of the history of philosophy were translations of Platonist authors (Plotinus and Porphyry at least), which are unfortunately lost. They greatly moved Augustine and set him on a road of creating a careful synthesis of Christianity and Neoplatonism that was very influential. Victorinus wrote a brief treatise De Definitionibus (On Definitions), which lists and discusses various types of definitions used by rhetoricians and philosophers; he recommends the substantial definitions preferred by the latter (prior to the late 19th century, this work was ascribed to Boethius). [8] Victorinus' manual of prosody, in four books, taken almost literally from the work of Aelius Aphthonius, still exists. His commentary on Cicero's De Inventione is very diffuse. [4] It incorporates many paraphrases to enable students to understand Cicero's text, along with philosophical explanations and digressions that reflect its Neoplatonist character. [9]

He retained his Neoplatonic philosophy after becoming Christian, and in Liber de generatione divini Verbi, he argues that God is above Being, and thus it can be said that He is not. Victorinus noted, "Since God is the cause of Being, it can be said in a certain sense, that God truly is (vereων), but this expression merely means that Being is in God as an effect is in an eminent cause, which contains it though being superior to it." [10] As well, Victorinus' Adversus Arium books would prove influential in blending Neo-Platonism and Christianity in the Latin West.

For medieval authors, Victorinus' works became important to students of the Scholastic movement. [11] Later, they were widely exploited by Claudius of Turin at the beginning of the 9th century, [12] by Haimo of Auxerre [13] around 850 and by Atto of Vercelli around 920. [14]

Sister Mary T. Clark has identified the following works attributed to Victorinus: [15]

Theological works

Exegetical works

Secular works

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ "Medieval Philosophy" (section 3), Plato.stanford.edu, Stanford University, December 2009, webpage: PS.
  2. ↑ Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, VIII,II, 3-6.
  3. ↑ Nello Cipriani, "Agostino lettore dei commentari paolini di Mario Vittorino", Augustinianum 38, no. 2 (1998): 413-428
  4. 1 2 Chisholm 1911.
  5. ↑ Jer., Ad Gal., praefatio (p. 6, lines 26-31 Raspanti): Non quo ignorem Gaium Marium Victorinum, qui Romae me puero rhetoricam docuit, edidisse commentarios in Apostolum, sed quod occupatus ille eruditione saecularium litterarum Scripturas omnino ignorauerit et nemo possit, quamuis eloquens, de eo bene disputare, quod nesciat.
  6. ↑ Clark (1978, 6)
  7. ↑ See further discussion in Dowson (2022).
  8. ↑ Usener (1877)
  9. ↑ Cf. Copeland and Sluiter (2015, 104f).
  10. ↑ Gilson (1952) 32; cf. Victorinus, "Liber de generatione Verbi divini", in Jacques Paul Migne, Patrologia Latina , VIII, col. 1022.
  11. ↑ Cf. Bruce (1946, 140).
  12. ↑ Pascal Boulhol, Claude de Turin: Un évêque iconoclaste dans l'Occident carolingien (Paris: Institut d'e?tudes augustiniennes, 2002), 250.
  13. ↑ Raymond Étaix, "Les Homéliaires carolingiens de l'école d'Auxerre", en L'École carolingienne d'Auxerre, de Muretach à Rémy (830-908), ed. Dominique Iogna-Prat et al. (París: Beauchesne, 1991), 246.
  14. ↑ Boucaud, P. (2013). The Corpus Paulinum: Greek and Latin Exegesis of the Epistles in the First Millennium. Revue de l’histoire des religions, 230, 299-332. https://doi.org/10.4000/rhr.8120
  15. ↑ Clark, translated by Mary T.; Victorinus, Marius (1981). Theological treatises on the Trinity (The Fathers of the Church, Volume 69). Washington: Catholic University of America Press. p. xiii. ISBN   9780813211695 . Retrieved 17 December 2016.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Augustine of Hippo</span> Christian theologian, philosopher, and saint (354–430)

Augustine of Hippo, also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Africa. His writings influenced the development of Western philosophy and Western Christianity, and he is viewed as one of the most important Church Fathers of the Latin Church in the Patristic Period. His many important works include The City of God, On Christian Doctrine, and Confessions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lactantius</span> Roman Christian author (c. 250 – c. 325)

Lucius Caecilius FirmianussignoLactantius was an early Christian author who became an advisor to Roman emperor Constantine I, guiding his Christian religious policy in its initial stages of emergence, and a tutor to his son Crispus. His most important work is the Institutiones Divinae, an apologetic treatise intended to establish the reasonableness and truth of Christianity to pagan critics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard of Saint Victor</span> Scottish philosopher, died 1173

Richard of Saint Victor was a Medieval Scottish philosopher and theologian and one of the most influential religious thinkers of his time. A canon regular, he was a prominent mystical theologian, and was prior of the famous Augustinian Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris from 1162 until his death in 1173.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tertullian</span> Roman Christian theologian and writer (c. 155 – c. 220)

Tertullian was a prolific early Christian author from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa. He was the first Christian author to produce an extensive corpus of Latin Christian literature. He was an early Christian apologist and a polemicist against heresy, including contemporary Christian Gnosticism. Tertullian has been called "the father of Latin Christianity", as well as "the founder of Western theology".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hilary of Poitiers</span> Bishop of Poitiers

Hilary of Poitiers was Bishop of Poitiers and a Doctor of the Church. He was sometimes referred to as the "Hammer of the Arians" and the "Athanasius of the West". His name comes from the Latin word for happy or cheerful. In addition to his important work as bishop, Hilary was married and the father of Abra of Poitiers, a nun and saint who became known for her charity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pelagius</span> 4th-century theologian, namesake of Pelagianism

Pelagius was a Romano-British theologian known for promoting a system of doctrines which emphasized human choice in salvation and denied original sin. Pelagius was accused of heresy at the synod of Jerusalem in 415 and his doctrines were harshly criticized by Augustine of Hippo, especially the Pelagian views about mankind's good nature and individual responsibility for choosing asceticism. Pelagius especially stressed the freedom of human will. Very little is known about the personal life and career of Pelagius.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boethius</span> Roman senator and philosopher of the early 6th century

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known simply as Boethius, was a Roman senator, consul, magister officiorum, historian, and philosopher of the Early Middle Ages. He was a central figure in the translation of the Greek classics into Latin, a precursor to the Scholastic movement, and, along with Cassiodorus, one of the two leading Christian scholars of the 6th century. The local cult of Boethius in the Diocese of Pavia was sanctioned by the Sacred Congregation of Rites in 1883, confirming the diocese's custom of honouring him on the 23 October.

Aelius Festus Aphthonius is believed to be the author of a Latin work called De metris omnibus incorporated as part of the Ars Grammatica of the fourth-century AD Christian writer Gaius Marius Victorinus.

<i>Confessions</i> (Augustine) Autobiographical work by Saint Augustine

Confessions is an autobiographical work by Augustine of Hippo, consisting of 13 books written in Latin between AD 397 and 400. The work outlines Augustine's sinful youth and his conversion to Christianity. Modern English translations of it are sometimes published under the title The Confessions of Saint Augustine in order to distinguish the book from other books with similar titles. Its original title was Confessions in Thirteen Books, and it was composed to be read out loud with each book being a complete unit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hugh of Saint Victor</span> German-French canon regular and theologian

Hugh of Saint Victor was a Saxon canon regular and a leading theologian and writer on mystical theology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francisco de Toledo (Jesuit)</span> Catholic cardinal (1532–1596)

Francisco de Toledo was a Spanish Jesuit priest and theologian, Biblical exegete and professor at the Roman College. He is the first Jesuit to have been made a cardinal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victorinus of Pettau</span> 3rd century Christian ecclesiastical writer

Saint Victorinus of Pettau was an Early Christian ecclesiastical writer who flourished about 270, and who was martyred during the persecutions of Emperor Diocletian. A Bishop of Poetovio in Pannonia, Victorinus is also known as Victorinus Petavionensis or Poetovionensis. Victorinus composed commentaries on various texts within the Christians' Holy Scriptures.

Homoousion is a Christian theological term, most notably used in the Nicene Creed for describing Jesus as "same in being" or "same in essence" with God the Father. The same term was later also applied to the Holy Spirit in order to designate him as being "same in essence" with the Father and the Son. Those notions became cornerstones of theology in Nicene Christianity, and also represent one of the most important theological concepts within the Trinitarian doctrinal understanding of God.

<i>De doctrina Christiana</i> Theological text by Augustine of Hippo

De doctrina Christiana is a theological text written by Augustine of Hippo. It consists of four books that describe how to interpret and teach the Scriptures. The first three of these books were published in 397 and the fourth added in 426. By writing this text, Augustine set three tasks for Christian teachers and preachers: to discover the truth in the contents of the Scriptures, to teach the truth from the Scriptures, and to defend scriptural truth when it was attacked.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hexameron</span> Genre of theological writing

The term Hexameron refers either to the genre of theological treatise that describes God's work on the six days of creation or to the six days of creation themselves. Most often these theological works take the form of commentaries on Genesis. As a genre, hexameral literature was popular in the early church and medieval periods. The word derives its name from the Greek roots hexa-, meaning "six", and hemer-, meaning "day".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Latin translations of the 12th century</span>

Latin translations of the 12th century were spurred by a major search by European scholars for new learning unavailable in western Europe at the time; their search led them to areas of southern Europe, particularly in central Spain and Sicily, which recently had come under Christian rule following their reconquest in the late 11th century. These areas had been under Muslim rule for a considerable time, and still had substantial Arabic-speaking populations to support their search. The combination of this accumulated knowledge and the substantial numbers of Arabic-speaking scholars there made these areas intellectually attractive, as well as culturally and politically accessible to Latin scholars. A typical story is that of Gerard of Cremona, who is said to have made his way to Toledo, well after its reconquest by Christians in 1085, because he:

arrived at a knowledge of each part of [philosophy] according to the study of the Latins, nevertheless, because of his love for the Almagest, which he did not find at all amongst the Latins, he made his way to Toledo, where seeing an abundance of books in Arabic on every subject, and pitying the poverty he had experienced among the Latins concerning these subjects, out of his desire to translate he thoroughly learnt the Arabic language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William of St-Thierry</span>

William of Saint-Thierry, O. Cist was a twelfth-century Benedictine, theologian and mystic from Liège who became abbot of Saint-Thierry in France, and later joined the Cistercian Order.

An ars grammatica is a generic or proper title for surveys of Latin grammar. The first ars grammatica seems to have been composed by Remmius Palaemon, but is now lost. The most famous ars grammatica since late antiquity has been that composed by Donatus.

Christian views on the classics have varied throughout history. In the early years of Christianity, the writings of Classical and Hellenistic authors were widely spread by Christian teachers. However, during the Dark Ages, the decline in the study of this literature as a whole, as well as the waning of Christianity's popularity throughout Europe, resulted in the extinction of its effect in Christian life until the spread of Islam—the reintroduction of Classical texts—and the "rebirth" of Ancient Greek and Roman philosophies and arts during the Renaissance, where "artists and philosophers, each in their own way, combined Christian belief and ancient philosophy into a balanced, rational, humanistic system". Today, churches' views are generally consistent with those of Renaissance humanists' in that "Christians should be able to read the classics ... because it is part of the Western heritage ... [and] because it is part of Christianity’s inheritance."

Neoplatonism is a version of Platonic philosophy that emerged in the 3rd century AD against the background of Hellenistic philosophy and religion. The term does not encapsulate a set of ideas as much as a series of thinkers. Among the common ideas it maintains is monism, the doctrine that all of reality can be derived from a single principle, "the One".

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.