P.F. Moretti: La Passio Anastasiae: introduzione, testo critico, traduzione.

Ramelli, Ilaria L.E.

P.F. Moretti: La Passio Anastasiae: introduzione, testo critico, traduzione

Pp. 238. Roma: Herder, 2006. Paperback. 30.00 [euro].

ISBN 978-88-89670-17-0.

The introduction to this accurate edition and translation into Italian of the Passio Anastasiae (henceforth: PA) is divided into two main sections: the first (pp. 11-44) provides a literary investigation into the PA, its narrative structure, its composition, and its possible historical setting. The second is devoted entirely to a description of the manuscripts and the creation of a tentative two-page stemma (pp. 45-94). Some corruptions shared by the whole textual tradition allow the editor to hypothesize the existence of an archetype, [alpha], on which three families of manuscripts depend; each of these families has further sub-families. The [beta] family contains the largest number of manuscripts and is characterized by the most remarkable textual innovations; its sub-families, [epsilon] and [zeta], are distinctly marked by precise textual features which are peculiar to each sub-family: these features make it easy to distinguish among these groups, whereas in the [gamma] family this is a more complicated task, and the separation into sub-families is much more blurred. Indeed, the [gamma] family has less striking textual innovations, and this makes the reconstruction of the relationship of its manuscripts difficult. The [delta] family is extremely small, comprising only two manuscripts, but it is notable in that it represents the Beneventum branch of the tradition. Moretti rightly pays attention to the diffusion of the PA during the Middle Ages, since it is possible to reconstruct the dissemination of the PA through Europe from the study of the dating and provenance of its manuscripts, ranging from the seventh to the fifteenth century. The general picture that emerges from this examination is not very different from that which was traced by Philippart for the Passio Cipriani. (1) Moretti remarks that the circulation of the narrative of the PA can be related to the various transportations of St. Anastasia's relics and to Benedictine devotion to her.

One more point is worth singling out for its methodological importance (p. 67 and n. 2): the labours of collatio codicum and constitutio textus must be undertaken with scholarly rigour also for editions of hagiographic texts; against the often prevailing "pragmatisme economique" (in Philippart's words), (2) Moretti rightly endorses Orlandi's defence of the use of scholarly editorial criteria in the publication of hagiographic texts, where critical editions are strongly needed. On pp. 96-98 Moretti consistently sets out her own editorial criteria and notes that the editor of the PA, unlike, for instance, the editor of the Historia Apollonii, is not forced to choose between two radically different options, namely either to normalize the spelling of the manuscripts or to retain the spelling, even though it is highly irregular, and print the text as transmitted in the manuscripts. This is thanks to the situation of the manuscript tradition of the PA, which allows scholars to reconstruct a coherent linguistic picture. Moretti also offers a survey of the Latin language and style in which the PA is written: as one would expect, the PA contains morphological patterns in word-formation associated with Christian authors (for example, refrigerium and aedificatio), and it displays numerous features of late and vulgar Latin, for instance, diminutives, pleonasms, a preference for analytical over synthetic forms (for example, prepositional constructions instead of constructions involving cases without prepositions), several quod/quia/quoniam + subjunctive constructions instead of constructions requiring only an infinitive, the use of the indicative mood in indirect questions, the employment of the so-called nominativus pendens, and so on.

Then come the critical texts and the translations of the Passio sancti Chrysogoni (= Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina 1795), the Passio sanctarum Agapae, Chioniae et Irenae (BHL 118), the Passio sanctae Theodotae (BHL 8093), and the Passio sanctae Anastasiae--the four Passiones that form the hagiographic cycle of Anastasia (BHL 401); this is followed by two epitomes. Two further apparatus critici indicate Biblical quotations, loci paralleli, and the points at which there is a change in the composition of a group or a family of manuscripts which record the text of the PA. The apparatus criticus is particularly rich; it mentions not only the variant readings recorded in the various families of manuscripts, but also the readings of the most recent manuscripts. Moretti hopes that the apparatus criticus will thus be useful in locating other 'testimonia' into the right place within the stemma; moreover, conjectures and variant readings found in previous editions are recorded. The notes to the translation are minimal and simply aim at clarifying the translator's choices. A bibliography (pp. 201-229) and indexes (pp. 231-238) close the book.

The Anastasia-cycle is a hagiographic novel with complex changes in the plot, all of which are summarized at the beginning of Moretti's introduction. The historical setting is that of the last great persecution, initiated by Diocletian, against the Christians, and the cities that form the background against which the events of the story take place are several, principally Rome, Sirmium, Aquileia, and Thessalonica. Anastasia is a noble woman, the daughter of the vir illustris Praetextatus and of a Christian matron. She is a Christian herself, and constantly visits her fellow-believers, especially Chrysogonus. However, she is imprisoned by her pagan husband, Publius, on the charge of magic. After the death of her husband, she sells all her possessions and devotes her life to the service of Christianity. After a trial before Diocletian in Aquileia, Chrysogonus suffers martyrdom. His corpse is buried by the presbyter Zoilus, who lives near the Christian sisters Agape, Chionia, and Irene; they are put to trial before Diocletian and are imprisoned; Anastasia assists them. The praeses Dulcitius falls in love with them, but when he tries to approach them in the cell where they are kept, he grows mad and embraces kitchen-tools instead of the young women. Agape and Chionia are finally put to death by the comes Sisinnius; subsequently Irene too is killed. I note in passing the 'speaking names' of the Christian women: Agape = Love, Chionia = Purity ("snow white"), Irene = Peace, and Anastasia = Resurrection; the pagans, on the other hand, have Latin names: Praetextatus, Publius, Dulcitius, and Sisinnius. When Diocletian returns from Macedonia to Sirmium, a Christian woman, who fled from Bithynia together with her children in order to escape the anti-Christian persecution raging there, is presented to him, and Anastasia, who helps her to assist the Christians, is captured and presented to the praefectus Illyrici, Probus. When he learns that she is the daughter of a senator, he consults Diocletian. She is handed to Ulpianus, Capitolii summus pontifex, who wishes to marry her, but when he approaches her, he is instantly blinded, and soon dies. Theodota is put on trial before the consularis of Bithynia, and after further adventures she suffers martyrdom together with her children. Anastasia, probably again in Rome, is imprisoned by the praefectus Lucillius, who, after trying to kill her by starvation, puts her onto a damaged ship so that she may perish in the sea together with a group of criminals, but she converts all of them and lands safely. Then she is summoned again before the prefect and suffers martyrdom on 25 December, probably in Rome. Apollonia, a matrona, thanks to the intervention of the prefect's wife, buries Anastasia's corpse and founds a basilica upon her sepulchre; this explains the foundation of the Roman basilica of St. Anastasia. It is in this church that in A.D. 457 Pope Leo the Great pronounced his homily 96 on 25 December, the dies natalis of St. Anastasia. He probably knew her story in the form in which it was recounted in this hagiographic novel.

The strong connection between many Christian narratives and the ancient novels is well exemplified by the Passio of St. Parthenope, preserved in Coptic and Arabic but originally written in Greek. According to Tomas Hagg (3), it allows us to reconstruct the plot of the fragmentary Metiochus and Parthenope, an erotic novel perhaps by Chariton. Another, even more impressive, example is the story of St. Galaction narrated by Simeon Metaphrastes. According to this story, Leucippe and Clitophon converted to Christianity and had a child, Galaction, who would subsequently convert his fiancee. It is not without significance, then, that Achilles Tatius is considered in the Suda to have been a Christian bishop. In fact, Moretti rightly states that the predominant direction of the relationship between pagan and Christian narrative was pagan => Christian (p. 23); however, even if this was the predominant direction, almost certainly it was not the only one. Elsewhere I have shown that this relationship worked also in the opposite direction: not only were Christian narratives influenced by ancient novels, but also ancient novels show points of contact with, and sometimes (as in the cases of Petronius, Chariton, and Apuleius) included even allusions to, Christianity and early Christian narratives, starting from the New Testament (4).

Moretti fruitfully analyses the PA in the light of Bakhtin's chronotope of the "novel of adventures and trials" and shows that, in this respect, the Passio reflects the characteristics of the ancient novels: the meeting of the two protagonists, Anastasia and Chrysogonus, initiates the action; then a series of adventures separates them, and finally they are together again in heaven. The vicissitudes that fill in the "adventure time" do not constitute an ordered progression, but are interchangeable, nor do they determine a moral or psychological development in the protagonists, but simply prove their firmness (in this case, in their faith and Christian virtue).

In addition to the chronotopic analogy, the PA shares many motifs with the ancient novels (in particular, Chariton and Xenophon of Ephesus), with the Historia Apollonii, and with the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, which are rightly taken as representative of the Christian narrative (5). Numerous similarities are carefully pointed out; among the most interesting is, for example, that, when Anastasia is imprisoned by her pagan husband, she is forbidden to approach a window. This duly resembles the episode in the Acts of Paul and Thecla 7-9, where the young Thecla listens to Paul's preaching through a window6. Another telling detail is that, during Anastasia's imprisonment in the PA, an old woman acts as intermediary between Anastasia and Chrysogonus. Moretti observes that, similarly, in Chariton old Plangon acts as intermediary between Callirhoe and her future husband, Dionysius. Moreover, I note that in Apuleius's novel, too, the miller's wife is said to have an old woman as intermediary between herself and her lover: sed anus quaedam stuprorum sequestra et adulterorum internuntia de die cotidie inseparabilis aderat. Cum qua protinus ientaculo ac dehinc vino mero mutuis vicibus velitata, scaenas fraudulentas in exitium miserrimi mariti subdolis ambagibus construebat (9.15). Of course, in Apuleius's novel the miller's wife is depicted in the worst of ways, but this is the effect of the novelist's parodic distortion of Christianity, for it is probable that the woman, just like Anastasia, is a Christian--as I argue in I Romanzi, chap. 9, and with further evidence in my forthcoming paper on 'Apuleius and Christianity'--and that the anus represents a deacon, as the celebration with matutino mero suggests. Another element that is worth noticing is that in the PA, in a section which has been added by the Latin redactor to the Greek Acts, and which seems to reflect a problem that was notorious in his time, Irene, when threatened to be handed to a leno, replies that she is not frightened at all, since only voluntary acts can constitute guilt: inquinamenta enim quae anima non consentit non suscipit reatus ... voluntas habet poenam. This theme, as Rizzo Nervo has illustrated, was particularly debated in the time of the barbarian invasions, and Augustine insisted that only a voluntary act can be a culpa (CD 1.16-19, 26-28). For a detailed treatment of this issue see A. Di Berardino, 'Il modello del martire volontario,' in T. Sardella--G. Zito (edd.), Euplo e Lucia 304-2004. Agiografia e tradizioni culturali in Sicilia, Firenze 2006, 63-106.

Moretti rightly rejects A.D. 486 as a terminus post quem for the composition of this text; the date was proposed by Lanzoni on the ground of the (vague and isolated) similarity between Anastasia's near shipwreck and the episode of Bishop Quodvultdeus of Carthage, who, after the Vandals conquered his city, was forced by Gensericus to embark on a ship that was doomed to shipwreck; in fact, he reached the Italian coasts safely. Regarding this bishop, I refer interested readers to a useful book Moretti does not mention, although it is one of very few recent studies devoted to this person: R. Gonzalez Salinero, Poder y conflicto religioso en el Norte de Africa: Quodvultdeus de Cartago y los Vandalos, Madrid 2002; see also my review in Aevum 77 (2003) 234-237.

Another notable point made by Moretti concerns the notion of inclusiveness (p. 23): she argues that Christian novels conform to the taste of a broad public, not necessarily only Christian, but including also pagans. My opinion is that the reverse may be true as well: the Greek novels could easily have included Christians among their readers--and perhaps even among their authors: even if the Suda account concerning Achilles Tatius's Christian faith and episcopal dignity is unreliable (but it should not be dismissed easily without serious thought), the more reliable source which handed down the information that Heliodorus the novelist later became the bishop of Tricca in Thessaly and introduced there the custom of ecclesiastical celibacy is worthy at least of serious consideration, as I argue in 'Les vertus de la chastete et de la piete dans les Romans grecs et les vertus des chretiens,' in B. Pouderon (ed.), Roman IV: Vertus, passions et vices dans le Roman grec, Lyon 2008. It is Socrates the historian of the Church, who had a good knowledge of Christianity in Thessaly and of the local bishop lists, and who probably derived his information on Heliodorus from local sources. He might not have read Heliodorus's novel, but this does not mean that his account on bishop Heliodorus, drawn from his source, is inaccurate. After all, whichever precise dating one may assign to Heliodorus, the Elvira council in the fourth century already prescribed ecclesiastical celibacy, and ascetic tendencies which included the rejection of marriage and procreation had been widespread in Christianity since the second century. Moreover, Theagenes, the hero of Heliodorus's novel, is from Thessaly itself.

It is telling that, as Schmeling notes, "the ancient novels ceased to be written about the time that saints' lives and hagiographic romances begin". (7) Now, it is also remarkable that the ancient novels began to be written and circulated exactly at the time of the first spread of Christianity.

The debate concerning the dating of the PA, too, is discussed by Moretti, who also contributes to it: whereas the traditional dating was between the end of the fifth and the beginning of the sixth century, Moretti argues for a date of composition around the middle of the fifth century. She bases her contention on Morin's attribution of the Liber ad Gregoriam to Arnobius the Younger (floruit AD 430-460), and on the view that the author of this text must have known the PA; this can be demonstrated by a passage on Anastasia which forms part of the Liber ad Gregoriam. At the same time, Moretti bases her reconstruction on Consolino's observation that the striking anachronisms in the PA make its protagonist similar to the Christian matronae linked to Jerome and Rufinus in Rome at the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century. Consolino rightly suggested that the portrayal of Anastasia's father, the pagan Praetextatus, probably contains an anachronistic reference to the late fourth century pagan senator Praetextatus. In the PA he is described as cultor ... idolorum, just as Jerome presents Praetextatus as idolorum ... cultor: I agree with Moretti that this can hardly be a coincidence. The fact that both Anastasia and her mother are Christian matronae, whose husbands are pagan, reflects the historical situation of the Christian families in Rome at the end of the fourth century. This scenario, I add, and the complexity of the pagan and Christian social network of the groups connected with Jerome and Rufinus, is well described by Elizabeth Clark, The Origenistic Controversy, Princeton 1992. This is the background against which we may place the PA, which imports Pannonic legends (Chrysogonus from Aquileia, Anastasia from Sirmium) into Rome. In this connection, Moretti's suggestion of locating the birth of the PA in the historical milieu indicated by a verse inscription (ICUR 5.13355) seems to me very interesting. The inscription, found in Rome, is dedicated by Lucceia to two Christian women, who came to Rome from Pannonia, like Lucceia herself, who is the daughter of Viventius, the praefectus Urbi in 365-367. Of the two dedicatees, Maximilla is described as a virgo ancilla Dei civis Pannonia, and her mother Nunnita is presented as matrona diaconis. This may be either an abbreviation for matrona diaconissa or a genitive form from the noun diacon, diaconis: in the former case Nunnita was a deacon herself, in the latter the wife of a deacon. According to Moretti, "la seconda ipotesi sembra piu verisimile, perche in Occidente non e documentata l'esistenza di diaconesse nei primi cinque secoli" (p. 31). The systematic study by K. Madigan and C. Osiek, Ordained Women in the Early Church. A Documentary History, BaltimoreLondon 2005, shows that in the Latin West, too, in the first Christian centuries there existed women who were not only deacons but also presbyterae, and even a few episcopae, some of whom were placed even in churches that were in communion with Rome. The same conclusion, for late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, is reached by the analysis of G. Macy, The Hidden History of Women's Ordination. Female Clergy in the Medieval West, Oxford 2008 (a review of this book by me is forthcoming in SMSR).

In conclusion, Moretti's carefully composed volume provides a new edition of the PA that is definitely better than the previous editions (the only other complete editions of the whole Latin cycle of the PA are by Delehaye and by Narbey, but they are based on a very limited number of manuscripts; all the other editions contain only parts of the PA). Furthermore, Moretti offers a useful study of the literary composition and the historical setting of the PA, with generally well-grounded arguments. Her book will be useful not only to experts in hagiographical texts, but also to all scholars and students concerned with ancient narrative and with the most interesting issue of the intersection between ancient pagan and Christian narratives.

(1) See G. Philippart, Les Legendiers latins et autres manuscrits hagiographiques, Turnhout 1977, 27-50.

(2) See G. Philippart, 'Le manuscrit hagiographique comme gisement documentaire,' in M. Heinzelmann (ed.), Manuscrits hagiographiques et travail des hagiographes: etudes, Sigmaringen 1992, 17-48, especially 31-32.

(3) T. Hagg, Parthenope. Selected Studies in Ancient Greek Fiction, eds. L.B. Mortensen T. Eide, Copenhagen 2004, 2004, 233-261, esp. 251-256.

(4) 'Petronio e i Cristiani: allusioni al Vangelo di Marco nel Satyricon?,' Aevum 70 (1996) 75-80; I Romanzi antichi e il Cristianesimo: contesto e contatti, pref. B. P. Reardon, Madrid 2001; 'The Ancient Novels and the New Testament: Possible Contacts,' AN 5 (2005) 41-68; 'Un quindicennio di studi sulla prima diffusione dell'Annuncio cristiano e la sua prima ricezione in ambito pagano,' in Ead.- E. Innocenti, Gesu a Roma, Rome 20074, 277-518; 'Apuleius and Christianity,' ICAN 2008, Lisbon 21st-26th July.

(5) See R. Pervo, 'The Ancient Novel Becomes Christian,' in G. Schmeling (ed.), The Novel in the Ancient World, Leiden-Boston 20032, 685-711; my Atti di Mar Mari, Brescia 2008, introductory essay.

(6) On these Acts, their ascetic tendency, and their novelistic development, see now W. Meeks--J. Fitzgerald, The Writings of St. Paul, New York-London 2007, 169-352.

(7) G. Schmeling, Xenophon of Ephesus, Boston 1980, 142.

Reviewed by Ilaria L.E. Ramelli, Catholic University of Milan. ilaria.ramelli@virgilio.it