Polyglot reception of early christian apocryphal text in late antiquity and early middle ages: The Pseudoclementines

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Meinolf Vielberg
• Subject Area: Greek and Latin Philology
• Term: from 2015 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 271852827

The project deals with the polyglott reception of the Pseudoclementines. It is part of the research proposal "Europa polyglotta. Orte, Funktionen und Wirkungen der Mehrsprachigkeit in Spätantike und Mittelalter" and goes back to long-term research of the proposer. The Pseudoclementines describe in autobiographical form what happend to Clement of Rome, when he followed the apostel Peter on his missionary journeys. The first christian novel follows the tradition of Clement and the history of the apostles and describes in a free way the early differences and confrontations between Greeks (pagans), Christians and Jews. The so called ,basic writings' of the Pseudoclementines are preserved in two different redactions. The Homilies are transmitted in the Greek original. The Recognitions are preserved in a latin translation by Rufinus of Aquileia. There is also a Syriac translation, consisting of parts of the Recognitions and Homilies, and two larger Greek epitomes from the middle ages. The polyglott reception is also visible in smaller Greek, Arabic, Georgic and Armenian abrigded versions and likewise in the Miraculum and the Martyrium Clementis and in other texts. In the past the so called ,basic writings' of the Pseudoclementines were reconstructed from the Homilies and the Recognitions. Since 2000 scholars began to study the Homilies and the Recognitions as, in a way, independent versions of the novel of Clement. According to this new approach some basic concepts and their semantic fields of the Greek and Latin version of the christian novel are analysed with the 'Wortfeldmethode'. Thus the question is answered, how the tradition of the Clementines changed not only by the redactors known as Rekognitionist and Homilist, but also by the influence of later translators, metaphrastic writers and redactors of new and additional texts. It is supposed that the content of the whole string of tradition remained to a certain degree stable, but some basic concepts changed not only by chance, by linguistic or other unknown reasons, but were intentionally changed to adapt the text for a better reception by groups of readers with a different linguistic, cultural, religious and church-political background in the different parts of the Mediterrean area. These changes may concern possible points of reference of their collective identity like the formation of the semantic field for Hellenes, barbarians. They range from linguistic shifts, which had a long reaching impact on the formation of collective identity, to supplements of the life of Clement, in which some regions of Europe are given more prominence and others are newly exploited for the tradition of Clement, to shortenings and abridgements with some importance for the history of the christian dogma and ecclesiastical history and to interpolations and adulterations, which may have endorsed the separation of the church in east and west.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants