ECF: Cyril of Alexandria: Commentary on John
John
by John Cyril
Contents
Preface to Online Edition
1
Introduction
8
Praefatio
19
Book I
23
Book II
107
Book III
217
Book IV
282
Book V
369
Book VI
463
Book VII
550
Book VIII
584
Book IX
605
Book X
706
Book XI
790
Book XII
876
Indexes
956
Index of Pages of the Print Edition
957
ii
Preface to Online Edition
Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, LFC 43, 48 (1874/1885). Preface to the online edition.
Some time ago I became aware that the Oxford Movement Library of the Fathers series contained a translation of the Commentary on the gospel of St. John by Cyril of Alexandria. The translation was split into two volumes, 43 and 48, each of more than 600 pages. The first volume was translated by P.E. Pusey, who also edited the Greek text during the 1870's. The volume is very uncommon, since most collections of this series tend to end with the volumes issued before 1850; all volumes issued during the 1870's are rare. But still more uncommon is the second volume, which was the last volume in the series and was issued in 1885 after the death of both P. E. Pusey and his father, Oxford Movement founder E. B. Pusey. This was translated by Thomas Randell. Through the cooperation of a faraway academic library I was enabled to obtain photocopies of both. The circumstances under which the second volume was produced are detailed in the preface to it by H. P. Liddon, which is online here.
The language of the first volume is called 'quaint' by Liddon. Readers may find other words for language which might be described as pseudo-Jacobean, except that King James I undoubtedly would have found it as baffling as we do. I commend to a reader with time on his hands the exercise of modifying a sentence or two into modern English. My own experience was that a complete recasting was necessary. It seems that a contemporary reviewer harshly criticised this strange version, thereby inducing Pusey to abandon the effort. Fortunately Randell's volume is rather more readable.
Volume 1 contained a 50 page preface, mainly by E. B. Pusey. This hardly refers to the Commentary at all. I did attempt to scan it, but after scanning 20 pages with great labour I abandoned the attempt. I will complete this if there is any public demand for it.
The text of Cyril's work has not come down to us complete. Books 7 and 8 are lost. However P. E. Pusey included in his edition a number of fragments of these books. I learn from the Patrology of J. Quasten (vol. 3) that the authenticity of these fragments is questionable, however. The source of these is unfortunately not indicated by Pusey.
The preface should have discussed the source of these fragments, and also the manuscript tradition of the work. In its absence, I have here translated and abbreviated the following from the praefatio to Pusey's edition of the Greek text in 3 volumes, Sancti Patri nostri Cyrilli archiepiscopi Alexandrini In divi Joannis evangelium; Accedunt fragmenta varia necnon tractatus ad Tiberium diaconum duo / edidit Philippus Edwardus Pusey. Oxford (1872):
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Preface to Online Edition
These volumes of Cyril's works contain those surviving works of this holy man which comment on the New Testament;---- excluding the fragments of his work on St. Luke, which were edited from the Syriac by Rob. P. Smith, Dean of Canterbury; for many of the Greek and Syriac sources are printed in his English translation ---- and likewise excluding some relics of the lost commentary on St. Matthew.
We have been able to considerably improve the text of Cyril's largest work, the Commentary on John. Our predecessors had at most access to a single manuscript, the Codex Barbarinus which Aubert also was allowed to inspect; this contains the first six books. Our most diligent helper, Theodorus Heysius, supplied us with this many years ago; see the description of this codex in vol. 1, p. 645.
The Vatican library contains two other manuscripts; Cod. Vat. 592, containing the first four books, and 593, containing the first four and the last four books. Both are 15th century, and equally well written. Very close to 593 is the manuscript of San Marco in Venice 121, of the same age, which is a copy of this manuscript. No other manuscripts are known, and the last four books only exist in Vat. 593 and the Venice manuscript: to which can be added enough material quoted by other writers from this work, that the text has come down to us more or less complete.
These manuscripts are referenced as follows:
B = Codex Barberinus, saec. xii., containing the first six books, newly collated with the greatest care by our friend Heysius.
D = Cod. Vaticanus 592, saec. xv., containing the first four books, collated by Heysius.
E = Cod. Vaticanus 593, saec. xv., containing the first four books and the last four. This edition is the first to use this manuscript for the first four books, as collated by Heysius. The last four were supplied for this edition by Hugo Hinckius, Ph.D. With this agrees
Cod. S. Marci 121, which we spoke of above; which restores some passages lost in E through . Aubert used both of these. I was unable to obtain a new collation of the Marcianus codex, but I consulted it in many places for the last four books, and refer to it as F.
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Preface to Online Edition
Books seven and eight have long since perished. Aubert gave what could be fragments from them, from the Catena on S. John by Nicetas, using a manuscript which once belonged to D. de Harlay, Bishop of St. Malo, now in Paris in the Biblioth?que Imperiale, Ms. Suppl. Gr. 159, bomb. saec. ca. xiv. But Nicetas cites from many other works of Cyril, and it seemed necessary to omit many on these grounds.
The good quality of B appears clearly from various witnesses and indicators. One error must be noted, which is common to the other manuscripts also; when the scribe made a careless mistake, often he corrected it, but instead of erasing the mistake he added above it the conjuction or .
Two further manuscripts of a Catena on St. John have been used. Both were composed by Nicetas, bishop of Heraclea in Thrace, who flourished in the 11th century. An older catena, composed by an unknown author, was printed by Corderius at Antwerp in 1630. The following manuscripts have been used:
a = Cat. in S. Joannem Nicetiana, in the Moscow Library, Cod. 93 (once 94).
b = Cat. on the gospels in the Moscow Library, Cod. 41 (once 42), written in saec. x, cited occasionally from the same source as Corderius.
c = The fragment of the Corderian catena (between p.447 and p.889 in Cod. Bodleian Barrocian. 225, saec. xii.ex.)
I = Some folios of the same text. Some are preserved in the library of the Holy Synod in Moscow, Cod. 119 (once 120), pp.50; others in codex 2, pp.181, 182, among the Greek manuscripts of Archbishop Wake in the Cathedral Church library at Oxford; others in a codex (containing homilies of Chrysostom, pp.140-147) in the library of S. Dionysius on the Holy Mountain. These folios seem to have been written after the middle of the 10th century.
Catenae were not used very much for the text of the first four books, as Nicetas does not quote very much from these books, except for bits in the oldest catena edited by Corderius. (In the same way Nicetas in his great catena on the Psalms derived material from an older epitome of a catena on the Psalms, now extant in Cod. Reg. Par. 139 and Cod. S. Marci. Ven. 17).
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