Compulsion to understand: the story of Anaxagoras in Pseudo-nonna’s commentary on Gregory the theologian

Annotation

The article discusses the problems of relationships between the different manuscript traditions of Pseudo-Nonnos’s commentary 36 on the fourth Oration of Gregory Nazianzen. Pseudo-Nonnos’s commentary is characterized by great variation: some manuscripts lack historiae that others have. The great variation has not prevented some scholars from assuming a single commentary that Pseudo-Nonnos used. Historia 36.IV is represented in the tradition part by a single title to a very obscure passage of the fourth Oration (or. 4.72), which lists various philosophers and poets, among whom the enigmatic Anaxagoras strap is mentioned. An early Syriac manuscript somewhat clarifies the meaning of or. 4.72, other Greek manuscripts give a different text. There is no certainty as to the extent to which these comments clarify the case. The variation of 36.IV appears to be a problem: it has been suggested that the original text was abridged or that there were originally several archetypes. It is more likely that Pseudo-Nonnos did not know how to explain the passage from Gregory Nazianzen, and so left a single title for tradition.

Keywords

Gregory the Theologian, Pseudo-Nonnus, Anaxagoras, manuscript tradition, textual criticism, exegesis, archetype.

Literature

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The study was funded by the grant of the Russian Science Foundation No. 23–28–01038
“The Exegetic Strategy and Theology of Michael Psellus in his Interpretations of Selected Passages
by Gregory the Theologian in the intellectual context of the 11th century” (Federal Center of
Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences), https://rscf.ru/en/
project/23–28–01038/