On the origin of votive lights

A while back I had a correspondence regarding votive lamps in early Christian churches.

This started with an enquiry regarding a text in II Enoch 45: “If anyone makes lamps numerous in front of the face of the Lord, then the Lord will make his treasure stores numerous in the highest Kingdom.”

I couldn’t shed a lot of light on this text, but more generally I observed that whereas lights are brought in for any Graeco-Roman meal lasting into the hours of darkness, thinking of Traditio apostolica and of Tertullian Apol. 39 inter alia, the burning of a perpetual light is something different.

I was able to cite a few texts; Tertullian (Apol. 35) didn’t think much of burning lamps during the day, and the same attitude persists in the Synod of Elvira c34 forbidding burning candles in cemeteries during the day: Cereos per diem placuit in coemeterio non incendi, inquietandi enim sanctorum spiritus non sunt. Qui haec non observaverint arceantur ab ecclesiae communione. Whereas this applies to cemeteries, and not churches, it does tell us that lights were burnt in cemeteries. This may relate to burial at night, (note that in the Acta of Cyprian the body is borne to the cemetery by the light of candles and torches) but may also indicate that lights were kept lit in the cemeteries beyond the time of burial and that burial might be accompanied by lights even during the day. The accompaniment of candles to the grave of Macrina (Greg. Naz. Vit. Macr. 994C) is less obviously taking place at night.

Things are much clearer towards the end of the fourth century. Paulinus refers to lights burning night and day (De S. Felice natal. 3) (PL61.467), and there is dispute between Jerome and Vigilantius (Jerome adv. Vigilantium) in part over the very issue of burning lamps in the martyria. This leads me to suspect that the votive lamp in churches originated in the martyria, and that this in turn originated from the custom of burning lights in the cemeteries. Dix (Shape of the liturgy, 419) states that “perpetually burning lights at the martyrs’ tombs are found before the end of the fourth century”, but gives no reference for this (unless he is mindful of Jerome, whom he cites in the following pages.) I would not put much confidence in the report of Anastasius Bibliothecarius that Constantine provided a massive pharum to burn before the tomb of Peter (PL127 1518-19), but it is significant nonetheless that this perpetual light is placed before a martyr’s tomb.

I was reminded of this reading an apocryphal Vita of Herakleidios from (6^th century?) Cyprus, where it is said that “The Father Mnason, arriving at the same time as us, prayed a great prayer, and taking oil from the un-extinguished (ἀσβέστου) lamp he put it on the father Heracleides and anointed him entirely (συνήλειψεν αὐτὸν ὅλον.)”

On this F. Halkin, “Les actes apocryphes de Saint Héraclide de Chypre, disciple de l’Apôtre Barnabé” Analecta Bollandiana 82 (1964), 133-170, at 165, comments: “Une lampe á huile qu’on n’éteint jamais, voila une attestation rare, sinon unique, de usage des « veilleuses » ou lampes du sanctuaire. Je ne trouve rien sur cet usage dans le Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, ni dans le vieux Thesaurus de Suicerus, ni á l’article ἄσβεστος du Patristic Greek Lexicon.” Hopefully this goes some way to filling the void.

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Tertullian De baptismo 17.5

In Tertullian De baptismo 17.5 we read: quam enim fidei proximum videtur ut is docendi et tinguendi daret feminae potestatem qui ne discere quidem constanter mulieri permisit? Taceant, inquit, et domi viros suos consulant.

The issue is with the phrase qui ne discere quidem constanter mulieri permisit. Does constanter go with permisit or discere? In either event, what might it mean? A check of various translations betrays a certain liberty with the text to make sense of it. Thus Evans, for whom I have the utmost admiration, takes constanter with discere and renders: “…he did not allow a woman even to learn by her own right.” I find it hard to assign such a meaning to constanter. Moreover, did Paul really forbid women to learn? It seems a stretch.

There is only one extant MS of the text; the editio princeps used a further MS, now lost, where for discere it reads docere. Is this a better reading? Or might we account for both readings by emending to dicere? As such constanter belongs with permisit, which is more natural, and the entire sentence makes complete sense: “… who consistently would not even allow a woman to speak.”

This issue came up at dinner with friends last night and the possible solution came after a sleepless night turning it over in my mind! My question to them (and you) is whether this is a brilliant emendation or the desperate contrivance of an indifferent Latinist.

Quaestiones Melitonianae 3: fragments on baptism in Coptic

This is my third, and final, post in response to the enquiries of “Robert”, in comments below.

The final set of possibly Melitonian fragments left out of consideration in the recent re-edition of my 2001 work were omitted principally because they were first attributed to Melito after the work had gone to press.

Alin Suciu suggested, in a paper given in Claremont last year, that fragments published by Alla I. Elanskaya under the title “The Treatise on the Symbolics of Baptism and the Elements.” in The Literary Coptic Manuscripts in the A.S. Pushkin State Fine Arts Museum in Moscow (Vigiliae Christianae supp. 18; Leiden: Brill, 1994), 167-200 might represent fragments of a lost work of Melito.

I asked Dr Suciu whether he intended to publish this identification, but he stated that first he had to make new examination of the papyrus, in particular to see what further fragments might be put in place. I do hope he is successful, and look forward very much to publication.

Having said this much, I must admit to doubting the Melitonian provenance of these fragments. Their import is to discuss the interpenetration of water and spirit in the work of baptism, and the effect of the baptism of Jesus. This stoic approach is reminiscent of Tertullian in De baptismo. Spirit, however, said in the fragments to be a creation of God (thus indicating, as Suciu rightly says, an early date), is in Melito’s extant work less a person, or an object, but rather the property of God (Melito is functionally binitarian). Thus it is hard to see how spirit can be both a creature of God and the essence of God.

There is a certain link in that the fragments share with Melito’s fragment 8b the image of the sun being “baptized” nightly in the sea. However, this simply means that the authors share a stoic approach to Homeric exegesis (see, inter alia, Macrobius Saturnalia 1.23). It is also interesting that the fragments cite the conclusion to the pseudo-Hippolytean homily De theophania, which Dr Suciu, and others, believe to be an interpolation into the ps-Hippolytean work. I do not believe that it is, and so the fragments have cited this (?third-century?) text for some reason which, due to the fragmentary nature of the material, I cannot divine.

Although I do not agree with Dr Suciu that this is a lost work of Melito, it is certainly an important and early work. I am grateful to him for drawing it to my attention and for sharing with me the slides from his Claremont presentation. And I look forward with great excitement to his eventual publication.