Legacy and Reception

How Gregory of Nazianzus became, simply, “the Theologian” — the name the Church gave to no other Father but the Evangelist John and (later) Symeon the New Theologian; his feasts and the long itinerary of his relics from Constantinople to Rome and back; and his reception East and West, from the most-cited Father of Byzantium and the commentary tradition his difficult orations provoked, through Maximus the Confessor’s Ambigua, to the Latin translators and the modern scholarly recovery of his theology and his poetry.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)

This section turns from Gregory’s own works to his afterlife in the Church and in the academy. Two complementary stories are told.

The first is the story of the name and the cult. Gregory is the only one of the Cappadocians, and one of only three figures in all the tradition, to bear the title ho Theologos — “the Theologian.” The Theologian Title examines what that word meant in the Orthodox sense (theologia as the vision and confession of the Triune God), where the title is first attested (the Address to Marcian appended to the acts of Chalcedon in 451, probably by Theodoret of Cyrrhus — a point recent scholarship has sharpened against the loose claim that “Chalcedon conferred” it), and how it lives in the calendar: his feast on January 25, his place in the Three Holy Hierarchs on January 30, the 950 translation of his relics, and their 2004 return, with Chrysostom’s, from Rome to the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

The second is the story of reception. Reception East and West traces Gregory as the most-quoted Father in Byzantium after Scripture — “the Christian Demosthenes” — and the commentary tradition his allusive orations called forth (Pseudo-Nonnus, Basil Minimus, Elias of Crete); Maximus the Confessor’s Ambigua, born from “difficulties” in Gregory’s hard sayings; the Latin West that received him through Rufinus’ translations and Jerome’s claim to have been his pupil; and the modern recovery (McGuckin, Beeley, Daley, the Re-Reading Gregory volume, and the rediscovery of his poetry).

Section Contents

• The Theologian Title — the meaning of theologia; the three who bear the name; the Chalcedon/Theodoret attestation; his feasts (January 25; January 30); the 950 translation and 2004 return of the relics; his liturgical afterlife in the festal canons.
• Reception East and West — the most-cited Father; the Byzantine commentary tradition (Pseudo-Nonnus, Basil Minimus, Elias of Crete); Maximus’ Ambigua; Rufinus and Jerome in the Latin West; the modern scholarship and the recovery of the poetry.

See Also

• The Five Theological Orations — the work that earned him the name
• The Friendship with Basil — the friend with whom he shares the January 30 feast
• The Poems — the corpus modern scholarship has recovered
• St. Basil the Great — The Three Hierarchs — the parallel account of the January 30 feast
• St. John Chrysostom — Golden Mouth Legacy — the third hierarch’s reception
• St. Maximus the Confessor — The Logoi of Creation — the Ambigua as commentary on Gregory
• The Church Fathers — Gregory among the Fathers

References

• McGuckin, John A. St. Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001.
• Beeley, Christopher A. Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and the Knowledge of God: In Your Light We Shall See Light. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
• Daley, Brian E. Gregory of Nazianzus. The Early Church Fathers. London: Routledge, 2006.
• Beeley, Christopher A., ed. Re-Reading Gregory of Nazianzus: Essays on History, Theology, and Culture. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012.