Gregory of Nazianz

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Andrei Rublev : Gregory the Theologian (Iconostasis of the Uspensky Cathedral in Vladimir , 1408)

Gregor von Nazianz , also Gregorius von Nazianzus , old Gr. Γρηγόριος Α 'ὁ Ναζιανζηνός, Γρηγόριος ὁ Θεολόγος (* around 329 in Arianzos at Nazianzus (eastern of. Aksaray ) in Cappadocia , † January 25 390 ibid), was bishop of Sasima (now the titular Sasima ) in Cappadocia, now Çavdarlı , for a short time Metropolitan of Constantinople and with Basil the Great and his brother Gregory of Nyssa one of the three Cappadocian fathers , also known as the Cappadocian triumvirate . All three decisively shaped the theology of the 4th century with the elaboration of the doctrine of the Trinity .

He is one of the four great Greek Doctors of the Ancient Church and one of only three Church Fathers to be officially awarded the title of Theologian (ὁ Θεολόγος) (the other two are the Apostle John and Symeon the New Theologian ). Together with Basil the Great and John Chrysostom , he is one of the three holy hierarchs .

Church historical circumstances

Gregory was born a few years after the First Council of Nicaea . Although Arianism had been condemned by the council, it largely prevailed in politics and society well beyond the middle of the century, especially in the army dominated by the Arian Goths , the imperial family and the capital Constantinople.

Life

Gregor's father, Gregor von Nazianz the Elder , a Jew converted through the influence of his wife, first a rhetor and then Bishop of Nazianz for 45 years, and his mother Nonna were canonized as well as his two siblings Caesarius of Nazianz and Gorgonia . His brother Caesarius († 368) was a doctor at Emperor Julian's court and governor of Bithynia .

Many details are known about Gregory's life, primarily through the numerous letters that have survived, which are also valuable historical witnesses, but also through the funeral orations that he gave for his parents and siblings and his friend Basilius.

Gregory studied in Caesarea in Cappadocia , in Caesarea in Palestine , Alexandria and Athens and was thus a well-traveled and highly educated man of his time. During their study time in Athens they developed a close friendship with Basil the Great . In his funeral oration for Basil, he gives a vivid description of student life at that time. Another fellow student was the future emperor Julian in 355, for whom, however, as he showed in the two speeches against Julian, he felt no preference.

After completing his studies, he led an ascetic hermit life with Basil in Pontos for two years , characterized by physical work, intensive Bible study and prayer .

Then he had to divide his time between the family duty of helping his 85-year-old father in running the diocese and his ideal of a secluded, ascetic life.

In 361 he was ordained a priest by his father, much against his will. He vividly describes these inner struggles in a sermon that has become a classic on the responsibility of the priesthood, so that it is still quoted today in the Catechism of the Catholic Church .

In 370 Basilius became Metropolitan of Caesarea (after Basilius had first proposed Gregory for office) and thus a protagonist in the fight against Arianism . In order to strengthen his position politically, he made his friend Gregory of Nazianz and his brother Gregory of Nyssa bishops, neither of which was particularly enthusiastic.

After the death of his parents and siblings, Gregor withdrew one more time into the longed-for solitude, even in poor health.

In 379, however, he was appointed by the small Orthodox community as the only Orthodox priest in the Arian-dominated Constantinople. Since all Arian churches were closed to him in the meantime, he began to preach in a cellar, including his five theological speeches , for which he was posthumously awarded the title of theologian by the Council of Ephesus (a title that apart from him only the Apostle John, the author of the fourth Gospel, and the later Simeon, the "New Theologian" ). As one of the most brilliant speakers in early church history, he attracted an ever-growing audience - which, on the other hand, led to verbal and life-threatening assaults by Arians. However, they could not prevent the city from returning to Trinitarian orthodoxy under Gregory's influence. One of his students at this time was Jerome , who later became the church father and translator of the Vulgate .

In 380 he was named Metropolitan of Constantinople to the storm of enthusiasm of the population. He had considerable influence on the decisions of the first Council of Constantinople , which he initially chaired. On the other hand, as Patriarch of Constantinople, he sat between all the stools: at the court and with the higher clergy (the majority of whom had been Arian shortly before) the ascetic from the province, who strictly rejected all luxury in his life and his sermons, to put it mildly 'Surprisingly, he disappointed the people because he did not use his influence on the emperor. He was certainly not up to the rampant intrigues. As early as 381 he resigned from the office of Metropolitan - obviously relieved.

He spent the rest of his life as a hermit on a small remnant of his father's estate, Arianzos (following the example of his friend Basilius, he had donated the rest of his inheritance to the poor after his father's death), with a well and a garden as the only luxury. During this time he wrote the letters about the dispute with Apollinarius , further proof of his mastery of language and theological argument, and also a large part of his poetic work.

Gregory died on January 25, 390 in Arianzos. His bones were venerated for a long time in Constantinople, but robbed by Western Catholics during the fourth crusade in 1204 and then kept in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. In 2004 they were returned to Constantinople by Pope John Paul II .

theology

For Gregory, spiritual maturity and careful study of the Bible are indispensable prerequisites for serious theology (1st theological sermon) - practiced asceticism and spiritual discipline are closely connected with theological insight.

His theological reasoning focuses on the Bible and logical reasoning.

He demands that passages from the Bible must be interpreted in the context of the entire Bible, but he is also very careful about the linguistic subtleties. B. all possible meanings of "can not" and then asks which of these meanings is appropriate for John 5:19  EU , or he searches the Bible for the word "to" in order to interpret it correctly in 1 Cor 15:25  EU .

He starts from a continued revelation: Scripture shows God's plans from the Old to the New Testament with increasing clarity.

One of his main themes is the incarnation of Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ as true man and true God, particularly clearly stated in the 3rd and 4th theological speeches, but also in his Christmas sermon XXXVIII.

His summary of the doctrine of the Trinity is quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

“Above all, keep for me this good legacy, for which I live and fight, with which I want to die and which makes me endure all evils and disregard all pleasures: namely the confession of faith in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. I entrust it to you today. In this hour I will immerse you in the water and lift you out of it. I give it to you as a companion and protector of your whole life. I give you a single deity and power that exists as one in the three and contains the three in different ways. A deity without inequality of substance or nature, without increasing higher degree or degrading lower degree [...] It is the infinite natural equality of three infinites. God as a whole, everyone viewed in himself [...] God as the three, viewed together [...] I have hardly started to think about unity, and the Trinity bathes me in its splendor. As soon as I began to think about the Trinity, I was already overwhelmed by unity. "

- or. 40.41.

Work overview

Sermons

More than fifty speeches and sermons by Gregory have been preserved, including the very personal and biographically and historically informative funerary speeches for his parents and siblings and for his friend Basil. Most theologically significant, however, are those

  • Five theological speeches given in Constantinople in 379, in which he defines and explains the Trinity of the Council of Nicea. For these sermons he was given the title of theologian (the one who speaks about God) at the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus .

Letters

There are over 200 surviving letters from Gregor. Theologically significant are the letters about the dispute with Apollinarius, biographically informative are the extensive correspondence with Basilius, and historically valuable are the letters to his brother Caesarius at the imperial court and various higher officials. Gregor's letters are stylistically perfectly formulated, often a mirror of his character and his inner struggles, sometimes humorous (he was the only one who dared to tease the spirited and autocratic Basil), then again shrewdly arguing.

Poetic works

In addition to his theological eminence, Gregory was also an important poet , one of the best Greek poets of late antiquity.

In his, with 334 lines, relatively short poem Against the women's addiction to cleaning, he mainly polemicizes against the makeup of women. He combines the Christian way of life with ancient ideas. On the one hand, he demands a simple lack of decoration for going to church . On the other hand, he adorns his poem with a poetic language and makes ample use of the traditional treasure trove of Greek literature on this subject in Homer , Hesiod , the Greek philosophers, Greek comedy and others.

One of his poems was set to a Taizé song.

Memorial days

Gregory is considered the patron saint of poets and for a good harvest.

Works

  • Hermann Josef Sieben SJ: Gregor von Nazianz. Orationes theologicae. - Theological speeches, translated and introduced (Fontes Christiani, 22), Freiburg - Basel - Vienna - Barcelona - Rome - New York 1996.
  • Joseph Barbel: Gregor von Nazianz. The five theological speeches. Text and translation with introduction and commentary (Testimonia. Schriften der Altenchristlichen Zeit, 3), Düsseldorf, 1963.
  • Roberto Palla (editor), Manfred Kertsch (translator): Gregor von Nazianz: Carmina de virtute Ia / Ib. Graz theological studies, ISBN 3-900797-10-2 .
  • Michael Wittig: Gregor von Nazianz. Letters. Introduced, translated and annotated (Library of Greek Literature, 13), Stuttgart 1981.
  • Gregor von Nazianz, Manfred Kertsch (ed.): Reden. About peace, about love for the poor. 1983, ISBN 3-466-25035-8 .
  • Andreas Knecht: Gregor von Nazianz. Against the cleaning addiction of women. Improved Greek text with translation, overview of the history of the subject and commentary, Heidelberg 1972.

literature

  • Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz :  Gregor von Nazianz. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 2, Bautz, Hamm 1990, ISBN 3-88309-032-8 , Sp. 331-334.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • Demetrios Gones: Gregory the Theologian (Nazianzos) . In: Alexios G. Savvides, Benjamin Hendrickx (Eds.): Encyclopaedic Prosopographical Lexicon of Byzantine History and Civilization . Vol. 3: Faber Felix - Juwayni, Al- . Brepols Publishers, Turnhout 2012, ISBN 978-2-503-53243-1 , pp. 153-157.
  • Christopher A. Hall: Learning Theology with the Church Fathers. InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove IL 2002, ISBN 0-8308-2686-6 , pp. 56-74.
  • Christopher A. Hall: Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers. InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove IL 1998, ISBN 0-8308-1500-7 .
  • Marie-Madeleine Hauser-Meury: Prosopography on the writings of Gregory of Nazianz. (= Theophaneia . Vol. 13) Hanstein, Bonn 1960, ZDB -ID 538626-3 (also as: Basel, Univ., Diss., 1951).
  • Manfred Kertsch: Pictorial language with Gregor von Nazianz. A contribution to late antique rhetoric and popular philosophy (= Graz theological studies. Vol. 2). Institute for Ecumenical Theology and Patrology at the University of Graz, Graz 1978, ZDB -ID 558367-6 (also: Graz, Univ., Habil.-Schr.).
  • Thomas Kuhn: Silence in verse. Text, translation and studies on the poems of silence by Gregor von Nazianz (II, 1,34A / B) Contributions to Antiquity 328, Berlin 2014.
  • Josef Lercher: The personality of St. Gregorius of Nazianz and his position on classical education. (From his letters). Innsbruck 1949 (Innsbruck, Univ., Diss., 1949).
  • Franz Xaver Portmann: The divine Paidagogia with Gregor von Nazianz. A study of the history of dogma (= sources and studies of church history. Vol. 3). Eos Verlag, St. Ottilien 1954, ZDB -ID 527928-8 .
  • Rosemary Radford Ruether : Gregory of Nazianzus . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1969.

Web links

Wikiquote: Gregory of Nazianz  - Quotes
Commons : Gregory of Nazianzus  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Primary texts
  • Gregor von Nazianz: De humana natura (c. 1,2,14). Text, translation, commentary by Kristijan Domiter. (Patrologia Vol. 6) Frankfurt 1999.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.unifr.ch/bkv/kapitel3183.htm
  2. ↑ Taizé. Retrieved June 13, 2017 .
predecessor Office successor
Maximos Patriarch of Constantinople
379–381 		Nectarius
personal data
SURNAME Gregory of Nazianz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gregorius of Nazianzus; Gregorios of Nazianzos; Γρηγόριος Α´ ὁ Ναζιανζηνός (Greek); Γρηγόριος ὁ Θεολόγος (Greek)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Bishop of Nazianz in Cappadocia
DATE OF BIRTH at 329
PLACE OF BIRTH Arianzos near Nazianz , Cappadocia
DATE OF DEATH January 25, 390
Place of death Arianzos near Nazianz , Cappadocia