Gyorgy Gereby

Besides the filioque, probably the most divisive issues between Byzantine and Latin (and also Armenian) Christianity concerned two central aspects of the Eucharistic sacrifice, namely the use of leavened bread instead of unleavened bread (the azymes) in the Eucharist and the role of the invocation of the Holy Spirit (the epiclesis) for the transformation of the gifts. While both sides accepted the real change of the sacrificial bread and the wine into the body and the blood of Christ, the difference in the form of the rite and the respective theologies of these forms lead to contrary interpretations. The problem was first identified by Byzantines in the mid-eleventh century when they started to object to the use of unleavened bread on Christological and salvation-historical grounds. In the other case, the epiclesis, connected to the specific Western theology of transubstantiation, was attributed solely to the words of the priest. The Latin liturgy of the later Middle Ages tied the transformation to the Words of Institution only and not to the power of the descending Spirit that was indispensable for the Byzantines. The differences highlight far-reaching theological consequences for the status of priesthood and ecclesiology, as reflected in the popular handbook Stella clericorum in the West. This contribution addresses the ramifications of the two different theological positions.

The paper focuses on the direct Bible quotations that the anonymous translator and Evagrius of Antioch rendered from Greek into Latin as part of their versions of the Life of Antony, each in his own way. Did the anonymous translator use any of the existing fourth-century Latin translations of the Bible to translate the biblical quotations he found in the Greek original, or did he translate them himself, without recourse to translations already available? Which version of the Bible did he use when translating the biblical quotations, in Latin or in Greek? What does the anonymous translator’s “literal” and “low-register” style tell us about the translator? Was his non-idiomatic Latin a choice, “Christian” Latin, or rather a limitation in translating into Latin as his target language? On the other hand, what does Evagrius’ “high” and stylistically sophisticated and improved Latin tell us about Evagrius? Whom does he write for, and what do his readers expect from him? This paper aims at answering these questions.