Joseph Bidez

Joseph Marie Auguste Bidez (born April 9, 1867 in Frameries , Belgium , † September 20, 1945 in Oostakker near Gent ) was a Belgian classical philologist .

Bidez studied philosophy and literature at the University of Liège and graduated in 1888 with a doctorate. In 1891 he received his doctorate in law, and in 1894 he received his third doctorate in classical philology. From 1895 the politically liberal Bidez taught Classical Philology at the University of Ghent , from 1902 as an associate professor and from 1907 as a full professor.

Bidez was regarded as an excellent expert on the intellectual and religious history of late antiquity , especially the 3rd and 4th centuries. He has received numerous awards for his achievements in this regard and has been a member of several scientific academies. Among other things, he obtained an edition of the Church Stories of Philostorgios and Sozomenos . After the First World War , in which he joined the Belgian resistance against the German occupiers, he refused to have his Sozomenos edition appear in Germany as originally intended.

Bidez also dealt intensively with the Roman Emperor Julian . He began editing his works and wrote a biography about him in 1930 ( Vie de l'Empereur Julien ). The book was received with great interest by international experts, as it included an analysis of the immense source material and was extremely successful in terms of style. In 1940 the work was translated into German and also enjoyed great recognition in Germany. In the middle of the war it was published repeatedly, in 1956 the last German-language edition was published by Rowohlt Verlag . To this day it is regarded as a standard work, even if it has been partially obsolete.

Fonts (selection)

• La biologie d' empedocle . Gand 1892.
• Vie de Porphyre , le philosophe neo-Platonicien. Avec les fragments des traités Περι Αγαλματων et De regressu animae. Gand 1913.
• Vie de l'Empereur Julien . Paris 1930.
  • German translation by Hermann Rinn: Julian the Apostate . Munich 1940. Paperback edition with the title: Kaiser Julian . Hamburg 1956.
• Joseph Bidez, Gabriel Rochefort, Christian Lacombrade (Eds.): Julien. Œuvres complètes . 2 volumes in 4 parts, Les Belles Lettres, Paris 1924–64.
• Sozomenus. Church history . Edited by Joseph Bidez. Introduced, arranged for printing and provided with registers by Günther Christian Hansen , Berlin 1960.
• Philostorgius. Church history. With the life of Lucian of Antioch and the fragments of an Arian historiographer . Edited by Joseph Bidez, 1913; 3rd edition, edit. by F. Winkelmann, Berlin 1981.

literature

• Valeria Lily: Bidez, Joseph. In: Peter Kuhlmann , Helmuth Schneider (Hrsg.): History of the ancient sciences. Biographical Lexicon (= The New Pauly . Supplements. Volume 6). Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02033-8 , Sp. 201 f.

Web links

Wikisource: Joseph Bidez  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by Joseph Bidez in the catalog of the German National Library