Etudes sur Leontios de Neapolis (review)

This volume consists of six disparate studies of the two surviving hagiographical works of the Cypriot bishop Leontius of Neapolis who composed the Life of John the Almsgiver and the Life of Symeon the Fool during the first half of the seventh century. The offerings range from highly technical text and source-critical investigations crucial to further work on Leontius to synthetic essays on Leontius’s spiritual and social concerns likely to be of interest to a more general student of Late Ancient hagiography and piety.

The first, introductory chapter summarizes what little we can know about Leontius and situates the Life of John, composed in 641/2, against the backdrop of the controversy over Monotheletism. The emperor Heraclius attempted to impose a doctrine of a single will on the eastern Mediterranean provinces in the late 630s in order to resolve the division between Monophysites and Dyophysites. Arcadius, archbishop of Cyprus, had originally been sympathetic to the Monothelete cause and had therefore fallen under suspicion of being a Monophysite by Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem since 643 who spearheaded opposition to the doctrine of Monotheletism. (Together with John Moschus, Sophronius had composed an earlier life of John the Almsgiver.) Leontius’s Life of John, commissioned by Arcadius, celebrated the former Patriarch of Alexandria (610–619), a native Cypriot and staunch Dyophysite whose tomb was near Neapolis (modern Limassol). Déroche sees the commissioning of the Life of John as an attempt to cleanse Cyprus of the suspicion of the Monothelete heresy by promoting a new Dyophysite saint.

The second study reexamines the complex textual tradition of the Life of John the Almsgiver, a work originally written in a vernacular style and subjected to much rewording and editing over time. Considering a number of shorter recensions, translations into Syriac, Arabic, Slavonic, and Latin, and constructing a new stemma for the Greek manuscripts, Déroche proposes many corrections to the now standard text of A.-J. Festugière (Léontios de Neapolis: Vie de Syméon le Fou et Vie de Jean de Chypre [Paris: Geuthner, 1974], 343–409).

The third study explores the sources Leontius used in composing his two hagiographies. Determining the relationship between Leontius’s Life of Symeon the Fool and a brief description of Symeon in the Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius (4.34) remains a major problem in understanding the composition of the Life. Evagrius, writing before 594, placed the activities of the Fool for Christ’s Sake in the reign of Justinian. Leontius redated Symeon to the end of the sixth century in order to bolster his claim to have consulted an eyewitness. Most of the material in Evagrius’s account is recapitulated in Leontius’s Life. Following Festugière and Cyril Mango, Déroche posits a common literary source behind Evagrius and Leontius, a paterikon, or collection of anecdotes about Symeon. I have preferred a simpler solution, suggesting that Leontius based his account loosely on Evagrius (Derek Krueger, Symeon the Holy Fool: Leontius’s ‘Life’ and the Late Antique City [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996], 19–35). The state of the evidence may leave this issue irresolvable.

The source problems for the Life of John are more complicated and, given the historical importance of the Patriarch of Alexandria, of greater concern. Although Leontius’s spiritual concerns govern the narration at the expense of historicity, nevertheless, Déroche convinces that many details about John pastoral activities, his charity, his church governance, and his involvement in trade are accurate.

The fourth and fifth studies hold the greatest interest for the general reader. In “La spiritualité de salos,” Déroche reads a varied literary tradition to report a history of folly-based religious practice. The Life of Symeon the Fool (now available in English translation: Krueger, Symeon, 131–71) is the earliest full-length vita of a Fool for the Sake of Christ. Earlier cases include a late-fourth century Egyptian nun described in Palladius, Lausiac History 34. Later examples can be...