Search
Close
Search
Advanced Search
Search Menu
AI Discovery Assistant

Extract

It is more than thirty years since the late Pierre Périchon began work on an edition of Socrates for Sources Chrétiennes. Pierre Maraval has finally produced the first book in a volume reflecting his fine scholarship. He has wisely given up the original attempt to produce a critical edition, offering a reprint of the splendid critical text of G. C. Hansen (reviewed by Henry Chadwick in JTS, ns 47 [1996], pp. 324–9). Hansen's pagination is clearly indicated for convenient reference. The text is presented without critical apparatus, and unaltered, save only for Hansen's own Corrigenda published in Zeitschrift für antikes Christentum 2 (1998), pp. 295–8. These corrections are usually pointed out in the annotations, as are the rare occasions when Maraval himself prefers a different reading from Hansen's (pp. 100, 208). With text and French version we find a good, succinct introduction to Socrates and his whole work, and annotations which plainly benefit from Hansen's apparatus of sources and parallels, but which are refreshingly distinctive. Maraval rejects the view that Socrates used the largely lost work of Gelasius of Caesarea, and assumes it is always through Rufinus that the alleged borrowings come. It is not merely that Socrates does not mention this writer, as he does Rufinus and a number of other sources, but that he adopts positions contradicting known fragments of Gelasius (see pp. 25–8 and various notes). He holds that the Melitian schism was not about discipline (p. 76, n. 3). He follows A. Martin in attributing the letter which Socrates and most of us attribute to Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis of Nicaea instead to the Libyan bishops Theonas and Secundus, who were asking for restitution after the readmission, not of Arius, but of the Melitians (pp. 166–7, n. 2); this affects the timetable of Arius’ return to Alexandria (pp. 222–3, n. 1). He interprets Constantine's own words about ‘the token (γνώρισμα) of his most holy passion’ and ‘the pledge (πίστιν) of the saving passion’ as unambiguous references to the holy cross, in spite of Eusebius’ own application of them solely to the tomb (p. 136, n. 1). While his bibliography is rich and instructive, Maraval might have got something useful from the English edition of the Vita Constantini of Averil Cameron and S. G. Hall, and he does not include Hansen's ‘Mutmassungen über die Kirchengeschichte des Sokrates’, Zeitschrift für antikes Christentum 3 (1999), pp. 278–85. Blemishes are minor: I do not understand why a note explaining the absence from the episcopal list of Secundus of Ptolemais (with Theonas of Marmarica) is attached to his name actually in the list (p. 154, n. 2). Trajan is named instead of Hadrian (177, n. 30). Chapter 22.9 starts differently in the Greek from the French (Hansen being ambiguous); and there are defective section or line numbers on pp. 223 and 238. But all in all this is an excellent addition to Sources Chrétiennes, and one which will be indispensable for anyone studying Socrates. The need for a new and annotated English version of this history is manifest.

Issue Section:
Reviews
You do not currently have access to this article.
Download all slides