Matthew Gillis

Happy New Year! In this post I want to inform our readers of some new books on eschatology and the theology of grace in early and medieval Christian history. On eschatology, they are:

T.C. Schmidt, transl., Hippolytus of Rome: Commentary on Daniel and ‘Chronicon’ (Georgias Press, 2017).

Peter of John Olivi, Commentary on the Apocalypse. Translation, Notes, and Introduction by Warren Lewis (Franciscan Institute Publications, 2017). This is a large commentary written in the year 1298.

On the theology of grace, most of which relate to the ninth-century controversy over divine predestination, are the following books:

Matthew Bryan Gillis, Heresy and Dissent in the Carolingian Empire: The Case of Gottschalk of Orbais (Oxford University Press, 2017).

Rachel Stone and Charles West, eds., Hincmar of Rheims: Life and Work (Manchester University Press, 2015).

Jared G. Wielfaert, Prudentius of Troyes (d. 861) and the Reception of the Patristic Tradition in the Carolingian Era (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto, 2015). Available from ProQuest.

Guido Stucco, The Doctrine of Predestination in Catholic Scholasticism (2017).

Also, the following articles on the Gottschalk controversy may be of interest:

Brian Matz, “Augustine in the Predestination Controversy of the Ninth Century, Part 1: The Double Predestinarians Gottschalk of Orbais and Ratramnus of Corbie,” Augustinian Studies 46:2 (2015):155-184.

Jenny Smith, “As if Augustine Had Said: Textual Interpretation and Augustinian Ambiguity in a Medieval Debate on Predestination,” Past Imperfect 19 (2016)

Jenny Smith, “The Rebellious Monk Gottschalk of Orbais: Defining Heresy in a Medieval Debate on Predestination.” Both of Ms. Smith’s articles can be found on line.

Happy reading and wishing all of our readers a blessed 2018.

Frank

Below are some announcements of ancient commentaries on the Apocalypse in English translation that either have been published recently or are scheduled to appear soon.

Nerses of Lambron. Commentary on the Revelation of Saint John. Translation of the Armenian Text, Notes, and Introduction by Robert W. Thomson (Leuven: Peeters, 2007). Nerses, archbishop of Tarsus, wrote this commentary in 1180 AD in the Armenian language. It is an adaptation of the Apocalypse commentary on Andrew of Caesarea from the seventh century. Thomson’s translated text is excellent reading. A full review of it by me appears in the May 2011 issue of Kerux journal. Click here to read my review of Nerses of Lambron-Commentary on the Revelation of St. John.)

An English translation of the aforementioned Greek commentary on Revelation composed by Andrew of Caesarea in Cappadocia, from 609-614 AD, appeared in Part 2 of the 2008 doctoral dissertation of Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou at the Universite Laval in Quebec entitled “Andrew of Caesarea and the Apocalypse in the Ancient Church of the East.” It is available for free download at www.revelation-resources.com. Constantinou’s translation of the commentary is scheduled to appear soon in the Fathers of the Church series from Catholic University of America Press. Another English translation of Andrew’s commentary completed by Dr. William Weinrich is scheduled for publication in InterVarsity’s new series Ancient Christian Texts.

The Turin fragments of Tyconius of Carthage’s lost Apocalypse commentary are translated in an excellent dissertation completed in 2010 by David Charles Robinson at the University of St. Michael’s College in Toronto entitled “The Mystic Rules of Scripture: Tyconius of Carthage’s Keys and Windows to the Apocalypse.”

An English translation of the massive Commentary on the Apocalypse of Peter John Olivi, composed in 1297, is scheduled for release this summer by Franciscan Institute Publications.

The Apocalypse commentaries of Victorinus, Apringius, Caesarius of Arles, and Bede, translated by William Weinrich, are projected for publication in a volume of the Ancient Christian Texts series by InterVarsity.

Bede’s Apocalypse commentary from the early middle ages was translated into English by Edward Marshall in the 1800s in England and for years it was difficult to obtain in the States because so few libraries carried it. But it has now been reprinted in paperback and is available for purchase at www.fledby.com or www.whitcoulls.co.nz. The commentary is also available in electronic version on line at www.apocalyptic-theories.com and at the medieval sourcebook webpage at www.fordham.edu. Besides the aforementioned translation of Bede’s Apocalypse commentary by Weinrich, a new translation by Faith Wallis of McGill University is scheduled to appear in the Translated Texts for Historians series published by Liverpool University Press.

Two other items not related to Apocalypse commentaries, but that may be of interest to our readers:

Steven Cartwright’s English translation of Peter Abelard’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans is scheduled for release this April in the Mediaeval Continuation Series of Fathers of the Church from Catholic University of America Press. Abelard wrote the commentary in the mid 1130s.

Probably the most comprehensive book on Gottschalk of Orbais in English is the 2009 dissertation of Matthew Bryan Gillis entitled “Gottschalk of Orbais: A Study of Power and Spirituality in a Ninth-Century Life.” I read it last summer. It was one of those books you never want to be over. Gottschalk’s views on predestination sparked a heated controversy in Europe in the mid-ninth century. Most American doctoral dissertations can be purchased from proquest.com.

I would encourage institutional libraries, those who wish to learn more about how the Scriptures have been interpreted throughout Christian history, those interested in the Book of Revelation, and those who work with medieval texts, to add the aforementioned titles to their stacks as they become available.

Have a great day.
Frank

New Books on Eschatology & the Theology of Grace in Christian History

More Ancient Apocalypse Commentaries in Translation