De Gruyter (2017) h/b 128pp £48.95 (ISBN 9783110524208)
Fortunatianus is mentioned three times by St. Jerome in his own gospel commentary, as one of his valued sources. This, plus three fragments in later MS and a few other glancing references, is all we knew of him. He was bishop of Aquileia in the reign of Constantius II (so floruit between 337 and 361), came originally from Africa, and was known to have written a commentary on Matthew: Jerome says it had ‘ordered headings in a terse and rustic style’. By Carolingian times (9th century), only two references were able to name him, and his work had completely disappeared.
Then, in 2012, Lukas Dorfbauer, browsing the manuscripts from Cologne Cathedral Library, came upon Codex 17, which contains an anonymous gospel commentary, and recognised in it a system of chapter headings which fitted well with Jerome’s ‘terse and rustic’ description, plus matches to the three known fragments. This was enough to prove beyond doubt that he had found the lost commentary of Fortunatianus. It appeared to be largely complete apart from a few gaps and corruptions; the full text has led to the recognition of other MS which incorporated extracts from it, including one which supplies a few of the missing passages. Thus we now have the oldest (nearly) complete manuscript of a gospel commentary in the Latin tradition, preceding Jerome’s by some 50 years or more. This is the first English translation. It is worth noting that the Latin original can be visited on line, since it was fully digitised in 2002: Codex 17 can be found at www.ceec.uni-koeln.de . It is written mostly in Caroline minuscule script and can be read without too much difficulty—well worth a look.
The commentary is divided into four parts. The first is a ‘preface’ comparing and contrasting the four evangelists. This is followed by an extensive exposition of Matthew 1:1 to 2:18, the narrative which covers the genealogy of Jesus, the nativity and the Magi. After that comes a numbered list of titles (given as brief quotations) for each section of the main commentary: there are 129 sections covering the whole of Matthew, followed by much shorter coverage of Luke (13 sections) and John (18 sections). These last are from early chapters only: F appears to explain this small selection, as well as the total absence of Mark, on the grounds that the remainder largely reproduces material from Matthew. The final and largest part contains the commentary on each of the listed sections, sometimes brief, sometimes extensive; each section starts with the number and the full quotation matching what is given in the list. H. thinks it likely that the work was dictated over several sittings, and that the gaps in the latter half of Matthew, as well as the reduced treatment of Luke and John, may be ‘an indication of authorial fatigue’.
The most striking feature of F.’s commentary is its intense reliance on allegory (figura is his word). Almost every event in the narrative is explained as representing some ‘spiritual’ (i.e. allegorical) meaning. Bodies, mountains, towns, boats, sheep and hens and several female characters are figures of the Church; towers, fragrances etc. represent virgins; eyes stand for bishops, hands for presbyters and feet for deacons; the sea is the world; darkness, the desert, sterility, disease etc. indicate Judaism, and so on. A spring of water, a rock, the sun, a lion, lambs and chickens etc. are figures of Christ. Numbers are always significant: three, four, five and twelve represent the Trinity, Evangelists, Pentateuch and Apostles; two is the two Testaments; ten and twenty (written in Greek as I and K) are the first letters of Jesus and the Lord (Kyrios). This allegorical habit appears to place F. in the tradition of Origen; however, H. and Dorfbauer argue that he knew little if any Greek, and that his sources were Old Latin commentaries, now lost; odd usages indicate this, such as Lukas for Luke and cata meaning ‘according to’. Sometimes these links seem very odd to us, such as the association of the left hand with imperfection (so 99 and the Jews) and the right hand with perfection (100, the Church), because ‘the left hand is useless and does not work like the right hand’: H. relates this to the Roman system of finger reckoning, in which numbers up to 99 were counted on the left hand and 100 and over on the right. On the whole, this constant allegorising is unattractive to a modern reader, and indeed Jerome was soon to react against the habit in his own commentary.
F. constantly singles out the Jews as the antithesis of Christianity, without making distinctions. H. sees this as a symbolic opposition: ‘internal rivalry was a far more characteristic feature of Christianity in fourth-century Italy than conflict with Jews. F.’s account of Jewish sacrifices is ‘anachronistic by almost three centuries’, and F. would probably not have ‘recognised a Jew in the street’. He may simply have been copying earlier comments. Another odd feature is that F. makes almost no reference to contemporary heresies: his own stance appears to be orthodox, but he refers only once to the Arian heresy that ‘the Lord was made, not born’. When F. mentions heretics (unspecified), they almost always are referred to the past; John’s gospel was written to oppose them. H. dryly remarks that ‘this gives little indication of the upheaval experienced by the Church in north Italy during the rule of Constantius II’.
H. says that his main aim has been to make the commentary available to readers with little or no Latin. The translation is simple and straightforward, an easy read (as indeed is the ‘terse and rustic’ original). F.’s numbering system is reproduced exactly as in the manuscript; in the commentary, each of F.’s numbers is followed by the equivalent modern reference using the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). Biblical quotations are given in italics but exactly as F. wrote them and reproducing his inconsistencies (which may well stem from the non-standard Latin texts he was using). Each fifth line in the manuscript is indicated by a number in brackets, ending in 5 or 0, at the appropriate point in the text, so that it is easy, if you wish, to collate the translation with the original on line. Brief notes on each page include references to other biblical quotations in the text, and there are indices of scriptural quotations and subjects.
This is a scholarly but simple and accessible presentation for the general reader of a source which had been lost; as such, its value is obvious, even though we may think, reading it, that the author was not a patch on (say) Jerome, with his superior linguistic and historical skills. Perhaps there were good reasons why F. slipped out of the world’s consciousness for nearly two thousand years.
Colin McDonald
FORTUNATIANUS OF AQUILEIA: Commentary on the Gospels
De Gruyter (2017) h/b 128pp £48.95 (ISBN 9783110524208)
Fortunatianus is mentioned three times by St. Jerome in his own gospel commentary, as one of his valued sources. This, plus three fragments in later MS and a few other glancing references, is all we knew of him. He was bishop of Aquileia in the reign of Constantius II (so floruit between 337 and 361), came originally from Africa, and was known to have written a commentary on Matthew: Jerome says it had ‘ordered headings in a terse and rustic style’. By Carolingian times (9th century), only two references were able to name him, and his work had completely disappeared.
Then, in 2012, Lukas Dorfbauer, browsing the manuscripts from Cologne Cathedral Library, came upon Codex 17, which contains an anonymous gospel commentary, and recognised in it a system of chapter headings which fitted well with Jerome’s ‘terse and rustic’ description, plus matches to the three known fragments. This was enough to prove beyond doubt that he had found the lost commentary of Fortunatianus. It appeared to be largely complete apart from a few gaps and corruptions; the full text has led to the recognition of other MS which incorporated extracts from it, including one which supplies a few of the missing passages. Thus we now have the oldest (nearly) complete manuscript of a gospel commentary in the Latin tradition, preceding Jerome’s by some 50 years or more. This is the first English translation. It is worth noting that the Latin original can be visited on line, since it was fully digitised in 2002: Codex 17 can be found at www.ceec.uni-koeln.de . It is written mostly in Caroline minuscule script and can be read without too much difficulty—well worth a look.
The commentary is divided into four parts. The first is a ‘preface’ comparing and contrasting the four evangelists. This is followed by an extensive exposition of Matthew 1:1 to 2:18, the narrative which covers the genealogy of Jesus, the nativity and the Magi. After that comes a numbered list of titles (given as brief quotations) for each section of the main commentary: there are 129 sections covering the whole of Matthew, followed by much shorter coverage of Luke (13 sections) and John (18 sections). These last are from early chapters only: F appears to explain this small selection, as well as the total absence of Mark, on the grounds that the remainder largely reproduces material from Matthew. The final and largest part contains the commentary on each of the listed sections, sometimes brief, sometimes extensive; each section starts with the number and the full quotation matching what is given in the list. H. thinks it likely that the work was dictated over several sittings, and that the gaps in the latter half of Matthew, as well as the reduced treatment of Luke and John, may be ‘an indication of authorial fatigue’.
The most striking feature of F.’s commentary is its intense reliance on allegory (figura is his word). Almost every event in the narrative is explained as representing some ‘spiritual’ (i.e. allegorical) meaning. Bodies, mountains, towns, boats, sheep and hens and several female characters are figures of the Church; towers, fragrances etc. represent virgins; eyes stand for bishops, hands for presbyters and feet for deacons; the sea is the world; darkness, the desert, sterility, disease etc. indicate Judaism, and so on. A spring of water, a rock, the sun, a lion, lambs and chickens etc. are figures of Christ. Numbers are always significant: three, four, five and twelve represent the Trinity, Evangelists, Pentateuch and Apostles; two is the two Testaments; ten and twenty (written in Greek as I and K) are the first letters of Jesus and the Lord (Kyrios). This allegorical habit appears to place F. in the tradition of Origen; however, H. and Dorfbauer argue that he knew little if any Greek, and that his sources were Old Latin commentaries, now lost; odd usages indicate this, such as Lukas for Luke and cata meaning ‘according to’. Sometimes these links seem very odd to us, such as the association of the left hand with imperfection (so 99 and the Jews) and the right hand with perfection (100, the Church), because ‘the left hand is useless and does not work like the right hand’: H. relates this to the Roman system of finger reckoning, in which numbers up to 99 were counted on the left hand and 100 and over on the right. On the whole, this constant allegorising is unattractive to a modern reader, and indeed Jerome was soon to react against the habit in his own commentary.
F. constantly singles out the Jews as the antithesis of Christianity, without making distinctions. H. sees this as a symbolic opposition: ‘internal rivalry was a far more characteristic feature of Christianity in fourth-century Italy than conflict with Jews. F.’s account of Jewish sacrifices is ‘anachronistic by almost three centuries’, and F. would probably not have ‘recognised a Jew in the street’. He may simply have been copying earlier comments. Another odd feature is that F. makes almost no reference to contemporary heresies: his own stance appears to be orthodox, but he refers only once to the Arian heresy that ‘the Lord was made, not born’. When F. mentions heretics (unspecified), they almost always are referred to the past; John’s gospel was written to oppose them. H. dryly remarks that ‘this gives little indication of the upheaval experienced by the Church in north Italy during the rule of Constantius II’.
H. says that his main aim has been to make the commentary available to readers with little or no Latin. The translation is simple and straightforward, an easy read (as indeed is the ‘terse and rustic’ original). F.’s numbering system is reproduced exactly as in the manuscript; in the commentary, each of F.’s numbers is followed by the equivalent modern reference using the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). Biblical quotations are given in italics but exactly as F. wrote them and reproducing his inconsistencies (which may well stem from the non-standard Latin texts he was using). Each fifth line in the manuscript is indicated by a number in brackets, ending in 5 or 0, at the appropriate point in the text, so that it is easy, if you wish, to collate the translation with the original on line. Brief notes on each page include references to other biblical quotations in the text, and there are indices of scriptural quotations and subjects.
This is a scholarly but simple and accessible presentation for the general reader of a source which had been lost; as such, its value is obvious, even though we may think, reading it, that the author was not a patch on (say) Jerome, with his superior linguistic and historical skills. Perhaps there were good reasons why F. slipped out of the world’s consciousness for nearly two thousand years.
Colin McDonald