Gregory of Nazianzus's Letter Collection

The Complete Translation

Gregory of Nazianzus, Bradley K. Storin

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780520972933
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Religión antigua

Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, also known as Gregory the Theologian, lived an illustrious life as an orator, poet, priest, and bishop. Until his death, he wrote scores of letters to friends and colleagues, clergy members and philosophers, teachers of rhetoric and literature, and high-ranking officials at the provincial and imperial levels, many of which are preserved in his self-designed letter collection. Here, for the first time in English, Bradley K. Storin has translated the complete collection, offering readers a fresh view on Gregory's life, social and cultural engagement, leadership in the church, and literary talents. Accompanying the translation are an introduction, a prosopography, and annotations that situate Gregory's letters in their biographical, literary, and historical contexts. This translation is an essential resource for scholars and students of late antiquity and early Christianity.

Translation of Gregory of Nazianzus’s Letter Collection

Gr. Naz., Ep. 52

Late 383–early 384

To Nicobulus,

1. You’re requesting flowers from the meadow in late autumn and arming the aged Nestor with your current demand for something expedient for eloquence from me, who long ago abandoned the delight of all discourse and society. 2. Yet you’re not imposing upon me a struggle of Eurystheian¹ or Herculean proportions, but one quite gentle and suited to me, collecting for you as many of my epistles as I can. Now here it is! Put this sash² [Il. 14.219] around your books; it’s designed not for love but for eloquence, not for display but for utility even in our own courtyard. 3. Each writer, more or less, has a signature style: my words are instructive in maxims and precepts whenever permissible. A father in eloquence always appears in a legitimate child no less than parents do in most of his bodily characteristics. Well, such are my features. 4. For your part, please give me back the very act of writing as well as the profit that you glean from what I write here. I could neither request nor demand any better reward, or anything more advantageous to the requester or more fitting to the giver, than this.

Gr. Naz., Ep. 53

Late 383–early 384

To Nicobulus,

1. Since I’ve always preferred the great Basil to myself, even if the opposite would have seemed true to him, still now I prefer him because of the truth no less than because of our friendship. I therefore offer my epistles with his set down first. 2. For I also desire that we be linked with each other in every way while simultaneously providing a model of measure and moderation to others.

Gr. Naz., Ep. 51

Late 383–early 384

To Nicobulus,

1. Of those who write epistles (since you request this too), some write ones longer than they should be, while others write ones that are too inadequate; both miss the right measure just as some people, when shooting at targets, come up too short and others overshoot. The failure is equal, even though it came about in opposite ways. 2. Necessity is the appropriate measure of epistles. One ought write neither too much when there are not many subjects nor too little when there are many. 3. Why? Should wisdom be measured by either the Persian rope [cf. Call., Aet., frag. 1] or the infant-cubits³ [cf. Philostr. Jun., Im. 1.5.1; Luc., Rh. pr. 6], and should we write so imperfectly that it is not actually writing, but rather an imitation of noonday shadows or lines that meet before your eyes, whose lengths diminish and are vaguely glimpsed rather than plainly seen, recognized by certain parts of their extremities, and are copies of copies, to speak in a fashionable way? We ought to hit the right measure squarely, fleeing immoderation on both sides. 4. Indeed, that’s what I know about concision. As to clarity, here’s the notable point: one ought to avoid highly stylized language as much as possible, and instead incline toward the conversational. And, to speak concisely, the very best epistle and the one that has the best qualities is the one that persuades both the commoner and the educated—the former being as though down among the masses, the latter as though above the masses—and is recognizable at once. Similarly, it would be tacky for a riddle to be understood and a letter to require interpretation. 5. The third feature of epistles is grace. This we should preserve if we’re not to write letters utterly dry and devoid of beauty, adornment, and polish, as they say—for instance, without practical maxims, proverbs, and sayings, or even jokes and riddles, things that make language sweet—but we ought not appear to be overly indulgent in them. For the former is boorish, the latter pretentious. 6. They should be used like purple dye in woven robes. We should admit figures of speech, but just a few and not shameless ones. We should toss away antitheses, parallels, and equal sentences to the sophists, and if we do employ them anywhere, we ought to do so in a mocking, not serious, way. 7. Here’s the conclusion to my discourse, which I heard a refined man say about an eagle: when the birds were deciding the question of kingship, and each approached the others in their finest appearance, the eagle’s most beautiful feature was that he did not think himself to be beautiful. It’s most important that we keep unconcerned with beauty in our epistles and be as close as we can to naturalness. 8. My thoughts on epistles are such that I send them to you through an epistle. Perhaps you shouldn’t hold me to them [in my own practice], since I’m busy with more important matters. As to anything else, you’ll pour your own effort into it, being a good student, and refined men will teach you.

Gr. Naz., Ep. 54

Late 383–early 384?

To Nicobulus,

To laconicize is to compose not the fewest syllables, as you suppose, but the fewest about the most. Thus, I would even say that Homer is breviloquent and Antimachus prolix. How so? I judge length by subjects, not by letters.

Gr. Naz., Ep. 60

373–74

To Basil,

1. One part of executing your command is within my control, but the other part—and the greater part, I believe—is within Your Reverence’s control. The part within my control pertains to effort and willingness. For at no time back then was I fleeing from your company; rather,⁴ I always pursue it, and now I’m really yearning for it. 2. But the part within Your Holiness’s control is the straightening out of our affairs. Indeed, I’m tending to my lady mother, as she has been worn down by illness for a while now. And if I wouldn’t leave her in an uncertain state, know well that I wouldn’t be deprived of your presence. Only, help her with your prayers, one on behalf of her health and another on behalf of me for my journey.

Gr. Naz., Ep. 1

360–62

To Basil,

1. I confess that I lied when, because of our friendship and union while we were still in Athens, I made a promise to join you and practice philosophy with you. I have nothing better to say than that. 2. But I didn’t lie willingly; rather, one law trumped another—the one mandating care for parents⁵ over the one pertaining to friendship and intimacy.⁶ 3. By no means would I continue to lie should you accept the following proposition: sometimes I’ll join you, but occasionally you should be willing to join me so that all our affairs may be shared in friendship’s equality of honor. In this way, I can still have your company without upsetting my parents.

Gr. Naz., Ep. 2⁷

360–62

To Basil,

1. Under your cross-examination, [I’ll admit that] I can’t stand the Tiberina,⁸ with its mud and bad weather! You mudless tiptoer, you! You plains tramper! Soaring, aloft, borne about by the arrow of Abaris,⁹ so that you escape Cappadocia despite being Cappadocian!¹⁰ 2.. Or do I have it wrong? Is it that you’re pallid and cramped and take the sunshine as your only reward, while I’m the one who’s getting fat, I’m the one who has a full belly, I’m the one who has no constraints placed upon him? 3. But those things don’t apply to you: you live amid luxury and wealth while lounging about in the agora. I don’t praise this. So quit slinging my mud at me—you didn’t make your city, nor I my bad weather—or, in return for the mud, I’ll chuck back at you hucksters and any other lousy thing that the cities offer.

Gr. Naz., Ep. 4

360–62 (after Gr. Naz., Ep. 2)

To Basil,

1. Go ahead, mock and disparage my region. Whether you’re playing around or being serious doesn’t matter. Simply let yourself smile, take advantage of our education, and enjoy our friendship. Everything that comes from you pleases me—whatever it may be, however it may be. 2. It seems to me that you’re scoffing at these regions not merely to scoff, but, if I catch your drift, to draw me to yourself, like those who dam up streams to draw them in a different direction. Your words¹¹ are always like this to me. 3. For my part, I’ll admire your Pontus and Pontic burrow¹² as an abode fit for exile, what with the ridges that loom overhead; the beasts that put to the test your trust in the location; the isolated spot that lies down below, even if it is a mousehole with the august appellations of thinkery [Ar., Nu. 91–104], monastery, and school; the thickets of wild flora and the wreath of rugged mountains that puts shackles on you, not a crown; 4. the mediocre climate and the longed-for sun, which you can make out only as if through smoke, O Pontic and Sunless Cimmerians [Od. 11.13–19], sentenced not only to a six-month-long night (which, in fact, people say is the case) but also to not having even one unshaded part of being alive, the whole of life being one long night and truly the shadow of death [Ps 22(23):4], to use a phrase from scripture. 5. Shall I praise the road, both narrow and treacherous [cf. Matt 7:14]? Whether it leads to the Kingdom or to Hell, I don’t know; for your sake, may it lead to the Kingdom! As to the region in between, what do you want? Should I falsely call it an Eden and the fount that was divided into the four sources from which the whole world takes drink [Gen 2:10–14], or a dry and waterless desert that some Moses will make habitable once he uses his staff to make a stone gush forth [Exod 17:1–6]? 6. For whatever escaped the rocks became dried-up gullies, and whatever escaped the gullies became thornbushes, and what loomed over the thornbushes became a cliff. The road on top is also steep and dangerous on either side; it focuses the mind of travelers and trains them for safety. 7. The river rages down below; to you, O Grandiloquent One and Maker of New Names, it must seem...