In Search of the Latin Translator of Gregory of Nyssa's Letter to the Monk Philip

Abstract

In my book, 'Gregory of Nyssa, The Letters,' I was concerned to search for letters of Gregory's authorship beyond the thirty appearing in the two critical editions.' Among the six or seven new letters, the one that most fascinated me was the so-called 'Epistula ad Philippum monachum' (Letter to the Monk Philip). The existence of this otherwise lost letter was long known from three surviving Greek fragments: the title, the Incipit, and a short theological passage preserved by the outstanding 6th century defender of Chalcedon, Leontius of Jerusalem, and by John Damascene in the 8th century. The recovery of the full text of this letter was a marvel of gradual collaborative research over two centuries. It began with the father of modern Syriac studies, Joseph Assemani, when he discovered a manuscript (Codex Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale Syr. 203) of the 'Expositio fidei' by John Maron, 6 in which he translated into Syriac a large portion of this letter, stating that its author was Gregory of Nyssa. In the early 20th century Gustave Bardy brought this Syriac version of the letter to renewed scholarly attention.