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  • Gregory of Nyssa: The Letters. Introduction, Translation, and Commentary
  • Raymond Van Dam
Gregory of Nyssa: The Letters. Introduction, Translation, and Commentary. By Anna M. Silvas. [Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, 83.] (Leiden and Boston: Brill. 2007. Pp. xx, 283. $159.00. ISBN 978-9-004-15290-8.)

The career of Gregory of Nyssa finally flourished only after the death of his brother, Basil, the illustrious bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia. He inherited some of his brother's theological projects; he attended the ecumenical council at Constantinople in 381, after which the emperor Theodosius named him as an arbiter of orthodoxy in the eastern provinces; and he was invited to consult on ecclesiastical affairs at Constantinople again, in central Asia Minor, at Antioch, and even as far south as Jerusalem and Arabia. During the 380s he published most of his important theological treatises and sermons. But even though Gregory was now probably the most famous and the best connected churchman in the East, regrettably few of his letters have survived.

The sources for the lives and theology of the three great Cappadocian Fathers—Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, and their friend Gregory of Nazianzus—include about 640 letters. More than 95 percent of these letters were written by or attributed to Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus, while the standard collection of the letters of Gregory of Nyssa includes only thirty letters. Giorgio Pasquali and Pierre Maraval have each published a superb critical edition of Gregory's letters, and there are outstanding translations into French by Maraval and into German by Dörte Teske. In this book Anna Silvas has now provided an excellent English translation of the entire collection.

Silvas's book will be very important for the study of Gregory of Nyssa, for several reasons. First, her translation is accurate and readable. Gregory's longer [End Page 770] letters are especially interesting. In one, he described his prickly rivalry with Helladius, the successor to Basil as the new metropolitan bishop of Caesarea. In another, he explained his hesitations about the importance of pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In two letters to the great sophist Libanius, he respectfully noted his own skill in rhetoric. In a letter to the clergy of Nicomedia, he catalogued the virtues required in a new bishop. Another letter was a supplement to his Life of his sister Macrina, a celebrated ascetic. In other letters, he described a friend's fabulously extravagant country estate and his own plans to construct a shrine for a martyr. Gregory was inclined to wear his emotions on his sleeve. While Basil tended to be a bit constipated in his letters and Gregory of Nazianzus rather oblique, Gregory of Nyssa was quite fulsome and often very revealing about his personal concerns.

Second, Silvas includes translations of the letters of Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus that are addressed to or mention Gregory of Nyssa. Both senior churchmen were frequently a bit perturbed by Gregory's wayward behavior. Basil's comments were often disparaging of his brother's talents, while Gregory of Nazianzus once tried to convince him to renounce his career as a local teacher. In addition, Silvas discusses and translates several additional letters that are not included in Pasquali's and Maraval's editions, but that might be attributed to the authorship of Gregory of Nyssa.

The final attributes are Silvas's extended introduction and the annotations to the translations. In the notes she often follows the lead of Maraval, the best scholar of Gregory of Nyssa in our time. The introduction provides an extended biography that emphasizes in particular Gregory's intermittent association with the monastic settlements of Basil and Macrina in Pontus. Silvas agrees that Gregory had once been married, and she speculates that his wife had died young:"This man has suffered" (p. 23). As his letters make clear, however, thereafter Gregory's new commitment was to his family's involvement in promoting asceticism and a distinctive theological orthodoxy.

Raymond Van Dam
University of Michigan
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