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ER 2083

Anonymous author of the "Incomplete Commentary on Matthew" comments the Parable of the Two Sons (Matt 21:28-32) refering it to the roles of laity and clergy in the Church. A layman who converts is better than a hypocritical cleric. The mid-5th c., the Danubian provinces or Constantinople.

Homilia 40

Nam sicut omnes Iudaei quamuis interrogati, et per Mosen, et per Iesum, quasi a deo per eos loquente, spoponderunt omnia se facturos, quae praeceperat deus, et non fecerunt: Gentes autem quamuis non promiserint prius, tamen postea obedientiam deo dederunt. Ita enim et populares per hoc ipsum, quod saecularem suscipiunt uitam, denegare uidentur obedientiam deo: sacerdotes autem magis uidentur obedientiam promittere deo, praecipue per hoc ipsum quod specialiter in ministerio dei constituuntur. Nam qui doctor populi constituitur, sine dubio profitetur se talem fore, qualem esse oportet doctorem. Sicut enim qui sutoriam, uerbi causa, aut quamcumque alteram profitetur artem, etsi specialiter non spondeat, tamen per hoc ipsum quod sutoriam professus est artem, et opificium uel magisterium eius artis aperuit, uidetur tacite omnibus spopondisse, ut sine reprehensione impleat quam professus est artem. Sic sacerdos, et omnis clericus, etsi specialiter non promittat, tamen per hoc ipsum quod doctor constituitur aliorum, statim promittere deo uidetur in omnibus obauditurum se deo. Quae sit autem uinea, uel quomodo deus loquatur ad homines, diximus supra. Quis e duobus fecit uoluntatem patris? "At illi responderunt, primus."" Et uerum est, quia melior est laicus qui in prima facie saecularem uitam profitetur, re uera autem complectitur spiritualem: quam sacerdos, qui in prima quidem facie profitetur uitam spiritualem, re uera autem amplectitur uitam carnalem. Et melior est laicus ante deum poenitentiam agens, quam clericus permanens in peccatis. Laicus enim in die iudicii stolam sacerdotalem accipiet, et a deo chrismate ungetur in sacerdotium: sacerdos autem peccator spoliabitur sacerdotii dignitate, quam habuit, et erit inter infideles et hypocritas, dicente domino de malo dispensatore: Si autem coeperit sedere seruus manducare et bibere cum ebriosis, ueniet dominus eius die qua non sperat, et hora qua ignorat, et diuidet eum, partemque eius ponet cum hypocritis et infidelibus [Luke 12:45--46]. Vnde et modo sic inuenies rem. Secularis homo post peccatum facile ad poenitentiam uenit: nam occupatus negligentia seculari, dum scripturis non satis attendit, semper ei quae in scripturis posita sunt, noua uidentur: ideoque cum audit aliquid de gloria sanctorum, aut de poena peccatorum, quasi nouum aliquid audiens, expauescit: dumque aut bona concupiscit, aut mala timet compunctus, ad poenitentiam cito decurrit. Nihil autem impossibilius, quam illum corrigere, qui omnia scit, et tamen contemnens bonum, diligit malum. Omnia enim quaecumque sunt in scripturis, propter quotidianam meditationem ante oculos eius inueterata et uilia aestimantur. Nam quicquid illic terribile est, usu uilescit. Propterea clericus qui semper meditatur scripturas, aut omnino seruaturus est, et erit perfectus: aut si semel coeperit illas contemnere, numquam excitatur in illis, ut timeat. Quis aliquando uidit clericum cito poenitentiam agentem? Sed etsi deprehensus humiliauerit se, non ideo dolet quia peccauit, sed confunditur quia perdidit gloriam suam. Putas ne dominus quasi crudelis, clericis poenitentiam denegauit, dicens: Si sal infatuatum fuerit, in quo condietur [Matt. 5:13]? Sed quasi naturalem rem esse consyderans, quia non est qui doceat illum errantem, qui errantes alios corrigebat: ideo addidit, et dicit: "Amen dico uobis, quia publicani et meretrices praecedunt uos in regnum dei." Id est, non dico populares, qui secundum rationem uerbi uitam suam dispensant: sed publicani et meretrices, qui desyderiis mundialibus et uoluptatibus carnalibus seipsos mancipauerunt, praecedunt uos in regnum dei, quia illi conuersi desyderant esse quod non erant: uos autem denegatis in opere quod uidemini profiteri in uerbo, et estis tanquam arbores folia sine fructu habentes, non pascentes dominum suum, sed deludentes. Et uide quod non dixit, aut quia publicani et meretrices introibunt in regnum Dei, uos autem repellemini longe: aut quocumque alio uerbo significante non eos intraturos in regnum dei: sed ita, praecedunt uos in regno. [...] Secundum haec igitur uerba et sacerdotes significabantur ingressuri in regno dei, id est, credituri in Christo. Sed quia credentibus publicanis et meretricibus Ioanni, et baptizatis ab eo, sacerdotes aestimantes se iustos, neque credere uoluerunt ei, post publicanos et meretrices intraturi annuntiantur, sicut et factum est. Post ascensionem autem domini multi eorum per apostolos crediderunt in Christo, sicut testantur Actus apostolorum, dicentes: "Et multa turba sacerdotum obediebat fidei." [Act. 6:7]

(ed. Desiderius Erasmus 1530: 674-75; cf. PG 56, col. 852-53, ed. B. Montefaucon)

Homily 40

For just as all the Jews were asked both through Moses and through Jesus, as God spoke through them, and they promised that they would do everything that God had commanded them and yet they did not do it, but the Gentiles, although they did not promise at first, nonetheless obeyed God, so also the ordinary people seem to deny obedience to God in that they undertake a secular life, but the priests seem to promise obedience to God, especially through the very fact that they are specially established in the ministry of God. For one who is appointed a teacher of the people doubtlessly professes that he will be such a person as a teacher ought to be. For just as he who professes the shoemaker's art (to use an example) or any other craft, even if he does not specifically promise it, nonetheless by the very fact that he professed his shoemaking ability and his handiwork or mastery of that craft is apparent, he seems tacitly to have promised all that he will fulfill without blame the craft that he has adopted, so also a priest and every cleric, even if he does not specifically make a promise, nonetheless through the very fact that he is appointed teacher of all tacitly seems to promise God that he will obey God in all matters. But what is the vineyard or how God speaks to people, we have already said above.

"Which of the two did the will of his father?" And it is true that the lay person who at first glance professes the secular life but really embraces the spiritual life is better than a priest who at first glance professes the spiritual life but really embraces a carnal life. And a lay person is better when he repents before God than when a cleric remains in his sins. For a lay person will receive a priestly stole on the day of judgment and be anointed by God into the priesthood, but a sinful priest will be robbed of the priestly honor he had and will be among the unbelievers and hypocrites, as the Lord said of the wicked steward: "But if that servant says to himself, "My master is delayed in coming," and begins to beat the menservants and the maidservants, and to eat and drink and get drunk, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know, and will punish him, and put him with the unfaithful."

Thus even now you will find the matter so. A worldly person easily comes to repentance after sin, for preoccupied with worldly negligence while he is not paying sufficient attention to the Scriptures, those things that have been put in the Scriptures always seem new to him, and so when he hears something about the glory of the saints or about the punishment of sins, he grows terrified as if hearing something new, and while he either desires the good or fears the bad, his conscience is pricked, and he runs quickly to repentance. But nothing is more impossible than to correct one who knows everything and yet despises the good and loves evil. For all things whatsoever that are in the Scriptures are thought to be old and cheap in his eyes because of his daily thinking about them. For whatever is fearsome in there becomes cheap by use.

For that reason a cleric who always meditates on the Scriptures either will by all means keep them and become perfect or once he has begun to despise them will never be stirred by them so as to fear. Who ever sees a cleric quickly repenting? But even if he has been caught and humbled himself, it does not grieve him that he has sinned, but he is disturbed because he lost his glory. Do you think that the Lord denied repentance to clergy, as though as were a cruel person when he said, "If salt his lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?" But considering that it is a natural thing that the one who teaches an erring individual is not one who corrects others who are erring, so he said to them again, "Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you." That is, "I am not saying the ordinary people who live their life according the understandings of the Word, but the tax collectors and harlots who freed themselves from worldly desires and carnal pleasures will go into the kingdom of God before you because they desired to be earned into what they were not, but you denied by your work to be what you seemed to profess in your word, and you are like trees having leaves without fruit, not feeding your Lord but mocking him."

And see that he did not say either, "The tax collectors and harlots will enter into the kingdom of God, but you will be driven far away," or by some other word indicating that they would not enter into the kingdom of God, but he said, "They will go into the kingdom before you." [...] Therefore according to these words also the priests are indicated as entering into the kingdom of God, that is, they are going to believe in Christ. But because when the tax collectors and harlots believed John and were baptized by

him, the priests thought they were righteous and did not want to believe him, it was told that they would enter after the tax collectors and harlots, just as it happened. After the ascension of the Lord many of them believed through the apostles in Christ, as the Acts of the Apostles attests, saying, "And a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith."

(trans. Kellerman 2010: 314-15)

Place of event:

Region

Danubian provinces and Illyricum
East

City

Constantinople

About the source:

Author: Ps.-John Chrysostom
Title: Incomplete Commentary on Matthew, Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum
Origin: Danubian provinces and IllyricumConstantinople (East),
Denomination: Arian

"Incomplete Commentary on Matthew" (Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum) is the name given to a Latin exegetical commentary on the Gospel of Matthew which has been handed down under the attribution to John Chrystostomus. The name of the Opus imperfectum also served to distinguish it from another commentary, John Chrystostomus' Homilies on Matthew (CPG 4424), which is complete. The Opus imperfectum does not contain a commentary on Matthew 8:10 to 10:15, Matthew 13:14 to 18:35, and Matthew 25:37 to the end of the Gospel. Therefore, the commentary can be divided into three parts: commentaries (called "homilies" in the mss.) 1-22 (up to Matthew 8:10), commentaries 24-31 (Matthew 10:13-13:13) and commentaries 32-54 (Matthew 19-25). In order to facilitate the description of the manuscript families and the transmission, Van Banning has proposed to divide the third section into two parts, so that he speaks of four parts in all:

- part A (hom. 1-22)

- part B (hom. 24-31)

- part C (hom. 32-46)

- part D (hom. 46-54)

Commentary (homily) 23, included in early modern editions (and printed in PG 56, 754-756), has been identified as one of the homilies to Matthew by Chromatius of Aquileia. New fragments of the commentary were identified by Étaix in 1974.

The editio princeps was published by Johannes Koelhof in Cologne in 1487. The next one, of much better quality, appeared in Venice in 1503. At that time, the work was still considered to be written by Chrysostom, but translated by an unknown person. The first doubts about its authorship were expressed by Andreas Cartander in the preface to the 1525 edition. The next editor, Erasmus of Rotterdam, made only minor changes to the text of the previous edition, but was the first to firmly reject the authorship of John Chrysostom on the basis of the text fragments he described as "Arian". He was also convinced that the commentary was not the translation from Greek, but was originally written in Latin, albeit possibly by a person who knew Greek.

To this day, the questions of authorship, date and the region in which the commentary was written remain unresolved, and many different hypotheses have been put forward in scholarship. Stiglmayr (1909, 1910) and Nautin (1972) argued that the Opus was a translation from Greek and suggested Timothy, the deacon of Constantinople mentioned in Socrates, as a possible author; Morin (1942) suggested that the author of the Opus could be identified with the translator of Origen's Homilies on Matthew into Latin; Meslin (1967: 174-180) attributed it to Bishop Maximinus, who translated it from the so-called Arian scholia in ms. Parisinus Latinus 8907; Schlatter (1988) suggested the attribution to Ananius of Celeda. The various passages reveal the author's hostility to Nicene theology, which maintains that the Father and the Son are consubstantial. He thus seems to have belonged to a non-Nicene theology that modern scholarship calls "Homoian" (referring to the creeds of Rimini 359 and Constantinople 360). Schlatter, on the other hand, focused on the passages he considered "Pelagian" and wanted to place the author in the context of the controversies about grace. Further research is needed to clarify the doctrinal position and theological context of the work, but one promising avenue is to search Homoian circles in fifth-century Constantinople or in the Danubian provinces.

The author has made an extensive use of the commentary on Matthew by Origen (Mali 1991) but he was also using a very wide range of sources both in Latin and Greek (see for example Dulaey 2004).

The author of the commentary mentions the Emperor Theodosius I as already deceased (PG 56, column 907). Furthermore, he refers to teaching held at the Capitol in Constantinople, and we know that the "university" there was founded in 425 (Codex Theodosianus 16.9.3). It is therefore likely that the enactment took place in the second half of the reign of Theodosius II (408-450).

However, the uniformity of the work is also not certain, and it has not yet been proven beyond doubt that parts A-D were written by the same person at the same time. Piemonte (1996) even claims that parts of the commentary were written in the 8th century by Johannes Scotus Eriugena.

The great obstacle in clarifying many questions about the nature of the text is the lack of a contemporary critical edition. Joop van Banning published an excellent introduction to the planned edition in 1988, in which he explains the intricacies of the manuscript tradition. The complexity of the tradition and the large number of manuscripts (about 200) contributed to the immense scope of the edition project, which is still not completed today (autumn 2023). The research group in Fribourg (Switzerland) is currently working on the edition of Part A, which will hopefully be completed in the next few years. Until then, the text can be read in early modern editions (1525, 1530) and in Patrologia Graeca 56, which reproduces the text of Bernard de Montefaucon's 17th century edition.

Edition:

Tertius tomus operum divi Ioannis Chrysostomi archiepiscopi Constantinopolitani in quo homiliae in Matthaeum et Ioannem praeterea commentarii digni lectu in Matthaeum incerto autore, ed. Desiderius Erasmus, Basilea 1530, 474-752

Patrologia Graeca 56, col. 611-946

Translation:

Incomplete Commentary to Matthew, ed. T.C. Oden, trans. J.A. Kellerman, 2 vols., Downers Grove 2010

Bibliography:

J. van Banning, Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum: its provenance, theology and influence (D.Phil diss., University of Oxford, 1983)

J. van Banning, Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum. Praefatio, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 87B, Turnhout 1988

M. Dulaey, "Les sources latines de l’Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum dans le commentaire de la parabole des dix vierges (Mt 25, 1–13)”, Vetera Christianorum 41 (2004), 295–311.

R. Étaix, "Fragments inédits de l’Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum”, Revue Bénédictine 84 (1974), 271–300.

F. Mali, Das "Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum" und sein Verhältnis zu den Matthäuskommentaren von Origenes und Hieronymus, Innsbruck Wien 1991.

M. Meslin, Les Ariens d’Occident: 335–430, Paris 1967

G. Morin, "Les homélies latines sur S. Matthieu attribuées à Origène”, Revue Bénédictine 54 (1942), 3–11.

P. Nautin, "M. Meslin. Les Ariens d’Occident (335-430) [compte rendu]," Revue de l’histoire des religions 177 (1970), 74-80.

P. Nautin, "L’Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum et les Ariens de Constantinople”, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 67 (1972), 380–408; 745–766.

G.A. Piemonte, "Recherches sur les „Tractatus in Matheum” attribués à Jean Scot”, [in :] Iohannes Scottus Eriugena. The Bible and Hermeneutics, 1996, 321–350.

F.W. Schlatter, “The Author of the Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum,” Vigiliae Christianae 42 (1988), 365-375

F. W. Schlatter, “The Pelagianism of the ‘Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum”’, Vigiliae Christianae 41 (1987), 267-284

J. Stiglmayr, "Ist das Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum ursprünglich lateinisch abgefaßt?”, Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie 33 (1909), 594–597

J. Stiglmayr, "Das Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum: Zur Frage über Grandsprache, Entstehungszeit, Heimat und Verfasser des Berkes”, Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie 34 (1910), 1–38Vigiliae Christianae 41 (1987), 267-284

Categories:

Food/Clothes/Housing - Clothes

Described by a title - Sacerdos/ἱερεύς

Described by a title - Clericus

Attributes of clerical status

Theoretical considerations - On priesthood

Devotion - Reading the Bible and devotional literature

Pastoral activity - Teaching

Please quote this record referring to its author, database name, number, and, if possible, stable URL: M. Szada, Presbyters in the Late Antique West, ER2083, http://www.presbytersproject.ihuw.pl/index.php?id=6&SourceID=2083