Oratio Catechetica: Opera Dogmatica Minora, Pars IV (review)

A new volume has been added to the renowned critical edition series of the works of Gregory of Nyssa. Until this present work, several other editions of Oratio catechetica were published, all with serious deficiencies. The first edition (Paris, 1573) was based on some corrupt and disfigured manuscripts preserved in the Paris library; this was reprinted in the Migne’s Patrologia Graeca collection in the last century. A slightly better edition, based only on some late Munich mss., was published by the German scholar J. G. Krabinger in Munich in 1835 (the English translation of Gregory’s Oratio catechetica contained in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Library series used the Krabinger Greek text). The next edition is also worth mentioning, since it is the first truly critical edition. British scholar J. H. Srawley, author of the 1903 edition, collated fourteen mss. of the Oratio plus seven other mss. of Euthymius Zigabenus’ Panoplia dogmatica which quotes extensively from the Oratio catechetica. For his text, Srawley decided that the best mss. were three from the eleventh century and one from the twelfth century.

While considering the mss. used by Srawley, E. Mühlenberg, the new editor of Oratio catechetica, has discovered other important Greek mss. (59 in total) of Gregory’s writing, the earliest dated as far back as the eleventh century. Moreover, he uses a Syriac ms. (British Museum [now Library] Additional 14597) from as early as A.D. 569. In his 139-page preface written in Latin (a reverse from the GNO VII, 2 published in 1992 in which J. F. Callahan wrote the first non-Latin preface of the whole series), Mühlenberg gives a very elaborate presentation of the manuscript tradition. A stemmatic analysis shows that the fifty-nine Greek mss. originate from two archetypes, ω¹ and ω². The Syriac ms. seems to stem from the same archetype, ω^2a, as archetype ω² itself. Eventually, Mühlenberg decided that the best mss. to use for the Oratio catechetica’s text are eight Greek mss. from the eleventh to the thirteenth century. To these he adds the invaluable Syriac ms. already mentioned, and in the apparatus criticus he even mentions the text of the Migne edition for comparison.

In establishing the critical text, Mühlenberg has also analyzed other mss. where quotations from the Oratio catechetica occur: besides Euthymius’s Panoplia (already used by Srawley), some fragments from Theodoret of Cyrus, Leontius of Byzantium, Anastasius of Sinai and other writings are considered. Unlike previous editors, Mühlenberg has chosen not to divide the Oratio catechetica in chapters, although he indicates earlier divisions in the preface. The Greek text of the Oration is followed by a biblical index, as well as by an index of ecclesiastical and profane authors referred to by Gregory of Nyssa.

As it is usual with volumes in the Gregorii Nysseni Opera series, the quality of the print is indeed impressive. This, along with Mühlenberg excellent scholarship, makes Oratio catechetica a truly remarkable book worthy of its predecessors in the same collection.