The Presbyters Project

XXII. Quod si oculus tuus dexter scandalizat te. Oculum scandalizare dicit, si episcopus male doceat vel malae sit conversationi<s>; eruendum de corpore, id est de ecclesia proiciendum. Eadem <conparatio> sequitur et de manu dextera, quod facile presbyter intellegitur. Ne totum corpus vadat in Gehennam. Corpus ecclesia accipitur. Cum ergo *tales inventi fuerint, qui aut oculus aut dextera si<n>t *scandalizantes, id est male conversati, eruendos eos de corpore <…> ut corpus salvum sit et non eat in Gehennam. Quis autem est, qui sibi aut oculum eiciat aut dexteram *amputet, cum non sit oculi vel manu<s> agere, sed cordis, unde mala omnia procedunt: Inde enim exeunt fornicationes, furta, falsa testimonia. Superest ergo, ut de supra dictis intellegas personis, qui debeant de corpore abscidi vel avelli.

(ed. Dorfbauer 2017: 153; the words with asterisk mark the editor's emendations)

XXII. [Matthew 5:29–30] But if your right eye causes you to stumble. It says that an eye causes others to stumble if a bishop teaches badly or is of bad behaviour. To be torn out of the body is to be thrown out of the Church. The same comparison follows with regard to the right hand, which is easily understood as a presbyter. So that your whole body may not go into Gehenna. The Church is taken as the body. So when such people are found who are an eye or right hand which causes others to stumble (meaning that they behave badly) they are to be torn out of the body <…> so that the body may be saved and may not go into Gehenna. But who really does cast out their eye or cut off their right hand, since it is not a case of the eye or the hand but of the heart, from which all evils proceed? For from there come sexual improprieties, thefts, false testimonies. So it remains that you should understand this with reference to those characters which were mentioned above: it is they who should be cut off from or torn out of the body.

(trans. Houghton 2017: 34-35)

Place of event:

Region

Italy north of Rome with Corsica and Sardinia

City

Aquileia

About the source:

Author: Fortunatianus of Aquileia
Title: Commentarii in evangelia, Commentary on the Gospels
Origin: Aquileia (Italy north of Rome with Corsica and Sardinia)
Denomination: Arian

Fortunatianus, bishop of Aquileia is known from the note in Jerome`s De viris illustribus 97. Jerome places him in the reign of Constantius and mentions the commentary to the Gospels "in a terse and rustic style." According to Jerome, Fortunatianus was the enemy of Pope Liberius, exiled by the Emperor Constantius after the Council of Milan in 355. Fortunatianus supposedly persuaded Liberius to subscribe to the emperor`s Arian creed, but this information is uncertain.

Fortunatianus was present at the council of Sardica in 342/3. We do not know when he died. The next bishop of Aquileia, Valerianus, is first attested at the synod of Rome in 371. The commentary was most probably written in Aquileia during Fortunatianus` episcopacy, possibly during the reign of Constantius, as Jerome suggests. He also seems to imply that is written before the commentary of Hilary of Poitiers, composed in 353/356 (Jerome talks about Fortunatianus before Hilary). See the introductions of Dorfbauer and Houghton.

Fortunatianus`s commentary was read mostly regionally (it was known to Rufinus of Aquileia and to Chromatius) and was quickly forgotten. For long it seemed that the text did not survive. In 1920 Wilmart found two fragments which he ascribed to the missing commentary. Another fragment, found in the florilegium from Angers, was identified in the 1950s by Bernard Bischoff (all of them are edited in McNailly 1973). In 2012 Lukas Dorfbauer encountered an anonymous commentary to the Gospels in the ninth-century Codex 17 in the Cathedral Library of Cologne. Many features pointed to its early, fourth-century date, and Dorfbauer also noticed the similarity to the published fragments of Fortunatianus. Thanks to the discovery of the full text of the commentary new testimonies of its use in various commentaries from Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages have been identified.

Edition:

L. Dorfbauer ed., Fortunatianus Aquileiensis, Commentarii in evangelia, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 103, Berlin 2017

English translation:

Fortunatianus Aquileiensis, Commentary on the Gospels: English translation and introduction, trans. H.A.G. Houghton, Berlin, Boston 2017.

Bibliography:

Codex 17, Cologne Cathedral Library digitised

Codex 17 in Diane Warne Anderson, Jonathan Black, The Medieval Manuscripts of the Cologne Cathedral Library (updated electronic edition)

Bischoff, B., "Der Brief des Hohenpriesters Annas an den Philosophen Seneca – eine jüdischapologetische Missionsschrift (viertes Jahrhundert?)", in: Anecdota Novissima: Texte des vierten bis sechzehnten Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart 1984, 1–9

L.J. Dorfbauer, "Der Evangelienkommentar des Bischofs Fortunatian von Aquileia (Mitte 4. Jh.) Ein Neufund auf dem Gebiet der patristischen Literatur”, Wiener Studien 126 (2013), 177–198

L.J. Dorfbauer ed., Fortunatianus redivivus, Bischof Fortunatian von Aquileia und sein Evangelienkommentar, Berlin 2017

A. Wilmart, "Deux expositions d’un évêque Fortunat sur l’évangile", Revue Bénédictine 32 (1920), 160–174

Categories:

Described by a title - Presbyter/πρεσβύτερος

Impediments or requisits for the office - Improper/Immoral behaviour

Further ecclesiastical career - Lay status

Administration of justice - Demotion

Theoretical considerations - On priesthood

Please quote this record referring to its author, database name, number, and, if possible, stable URL: M. Szada, Presbyters in the Late Antique West, ER2163, http://www.presbytersproject.ihuw.pl/index.php?id=6&SourceID=2163