La biografia di Origene fra storia e agiografia. Atti del VI Convegno di Studi del Gruppo Italiano di Ricerca su Origene e la Tradizione Alessandrina (review)

The volume under review is the first in a new series, Biblioteca di Adamantius, published by the Gruppo Italiano di Ricerca su Origene e la Tradizione Alessandrina (GIROTA), which also publishes the journal Adamantius. Each volume in the series consists of tightly focused essays by major European scholars on a selected topic pertaining to Origen's life and thought or to some closely related aspect of the Alexandrian theological tradition. (The second volume in the series, released at the end of 2004, examines how concepts of nature, law, and history function within Philo's account of revelation. The third volume, released at the end of 2005, contains studies of Origen's Commentary on John. Information on forthcoming publications in the series can be found on the GIROTA webpage at http://hal9000.cisi.unito.it/girota.)

The present volume has been introduced and edited by Adele Monaci Castagno, who has previously edited the impressive Origene: Dizionario: La cultura, il pensiero, le opere (Rome: Città Nuova, 2000) and has also produced a number of fine studies exploring the connection between Origen's pastoral and spiritual vision and the more speculative philosophical and theological elements within his thought. The present volume has been carefully proofread and contains few typographical errors.

The essays collected here examine what can be known about the details and chronology of Origen's life. The contributors provide a close reading of the principal sources—the sixth book of Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History (which claims to draw upon letters of Origen that are not otherwise extant), the Panegyric traditionally ascribed to Gregory Thaumaturgus, the letter of Origen to Gregory (preserved in the thirteenth chapter of the Philocalia), the Apology for Origen of Pamphilus and Eusebius, plus the brief accounts provided by Jerome (De vir. ill. 54; ep. 33) and Photius (Bibl., cod. 118). Since the volume consists of ten essays, eight of which are followed by a lengthy critical response, it will not be possible within the scope of this review to summarize the conclusions of each individual essay.

The collection of essays as a whole, however, may be said to have two basic goals. First, the contributors aim to examine various proposals made by Pierre Nautin (Origène: Sa vie et son oeuvre, Paris: Beauchesne, 1977), whose critical study of the primary sources has called into question some traditional assumptions about these documents and about the details and chronology of Origen's life. Gilles Dorival (9–26) follows Nautin in refusing to identify the author of the Panegyric as the Gregory to whom Origen's letter is addressed but questions Nautin's identification of this otherwise unknown Gregory as a native of Palestine then studying in Alexandria. Enrico Norelli (147–74) likewise raises questions about the methodology underlying Nautin's source criticism. He also shows that the account of Origen's adolescence in the sixth book of Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History is constructed in accordance with certain apologetic concerns that guide Eusebius's biography and are themselves elaborations of themes found in Origen's own work. Éric Junod (183–200) examines how the depiction of Origen in the Apology for Origen is shaped by a similar apologetic strategy.

The other essays are less concerned with discussing and evaluating Nautin's specific proposals, but they do have a broadly similar goal, namely, to assess how late antique biographies (both pagan and Christian) are constructed from pre-existing sources and also reflect the peculiar agendas of the biographer. Such agendas, the writers show, should not be viewed as merely personal idiosyncratic constructions but as being closely tied to the ideals of the communities to which the biographers belonged and the challenges faced by these communities at the time of writing. Thus, for...