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Journal of Early Christian Studies 10.4 (2002) 537-538



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Catherine Conybeare Paulinus Noster: Self and Symbols in the Letters of Paulinus of Nola Oxford Early Christian Studies Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2000 Pp. 187. $60.

This volume is the latest to be published in the series of Oxford EarlyChristian Studies, directed by Gillian Clark and Andrew Louth, which includes scholarly works on the history of the early Christian centuries.

Following a brief preface, wherein Conybeare lays out the wide interest of her [End Page 537] study for specialists on Paulinus and for those interested more generally in the history of ideas and the development of early Christian thought, there is an eighteen page introduction. In addition to dealing with Paulinus' life and times, the author summarizes modern studies on the bishop's correspondence and aims to complete Trout's work, "in which he emphasized both the processual and the visible nature of Paulinus' withdrawal" (10). Conybeare attempts "to interpret and reframe the murky complexities of human life in a truly theological light" (11) and to bring out the intellectual and spiritual significance of the letters.

The first chapter is devoted to establishing the nature of the letters themselves by means of a systematic examination of the circumstances under which they were delivered. To that is added a study of the norms for composing letters and the mechanisms surrounding the letters' transmittal and exchange. The author then concentrates on the form, the process of composition, and the function of sacramental letters (sacramenta epistularia). This part of the book brings out the inner spiritual dimensions of the letters in late antiquity and completes the author's exploration of the "nexus of communication" (58), which she began in the previous chapter.

Chapter 3 shows how ideas about Christian friendship and the love of Christ are introduced and developed in Paulinus' epistolography. Loving friends more fully involves loving Christ more fully and becoming more fully Christian.

The next section deals with the constant interrelationship of the spiritual and the temporal in Paulinus' letters and with the way in which he describes material as opposed to imaginative spiritual objects. Conybeare discusses the meditative and creative practices of reading and viewing, which are developed around new patterns of thought. What results is "a world-view in which symbolic and spiritual connections [are] considered more real than literal ones, and in which the literal [is] only accorded significance in proportion to its evocation of such spiritual connections" (110).

Chapter 5 explores the mechanisms by which these new patterns of thought operated as well as their theological significance. The author provides a detailed reading of two imagistic passages by means of which she illustrates Paulinus' use of images, explores their theological implications, and notes the bishop's delight in paradox and fluidity of meaning.

The last chapter, which deals with the inner self and with personal identity, focuses on the modern, non-technical "sense of self." Here the author sheds light on the way in which an individual "situates himself or herself in the world" (131).

The volume ends with an appendix which deals with Hartel's manuscripts and with the dating of Paulinus' letters. The book also includes a select bibliography of primary and secondary sources, an index locorum, and a general index.

This carefully written work offers a highly literate and accessible study of the profound impact which Paulinus had on Christian thought and belief. The book emphasizes the bishop's ideas on friendship, on earthly and heavenly images, on Christian symbolism, and on the nature of personal identity at a critical point in the transition from the classical world to that of the early Middle Ages.

 



Hélène Perdicoyianni-Paléologou
Brookline, Massachusetts

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