Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/887

 party, encouraged by the invasion of the Goths, which they attributed to the neglect of heathenism, again attempted to have it restored by Arcadius and Honorius. Prudentius wrote these books to counteract their influence. The date of bk. ii. is fixed, as after the battle of Pollentia in 403, and before the abolition of the gladiatorial games,  404 (ii. 710, 1114). Bk. i. deals generally with the history and character of heathenism (cf. ii. 1–3). Bk. ii. also has a preface, with a prayer to Christ to help the poet as He once helped St. Peter on the water. The poet then deals in detail with the arguments of Symmachus. The poem is very interesting and of great historical value for the circumstances of the time and for the details of Roman mythology and religious rites. The prefaces consist of the typical use of Scripture, but there is no scope for it in the body of the books. They are full, however, of a sense of Rome's majesty, of vigorous description, and of high moral scorn. The language recalls Vergil (passim), Ovid, Juvenal, Horace, and Claudian (ii.704). Plato is quoted in i. 30. The subject-matter is influenced in parts by Tertullian (i. 396) and Minucius Felix (i. 48), but mainly by St. Ambrose, whose arguments are at times reproduced almost verbally.

C. Allegorical.—Psychomachia =Ψυχομαχία, De Compugnantia Animi (Gennadius) (the Spiritual Combat). The Preface consists of a mystical application of Gen. xiv. As Abraham with his 318 servants freed Lot, was blessed by Melchizedek, then begat Isaac; so the Christian, with the aid of Christ's cross (τιη, 318 = the cross (τ) of Ἰησοῦς), frees his soul, wins Christ's blessing, and brings forth good works. The poem opens with a prayer to Christ to shew how the soul is aided in its conflict (1–20), which is then described.

D. The Dittochaeon, διττόχαιον, (?) δίττος, ὀχή, the double food, or double Testament, stands by itself, and can scarcely be called a poem. It comprises 49 sets of 4 verses on scenes from O. and N. T. They are dry and jejune, and chiefly interesting as apparently composed to describe a series of paintings. See Lanfranchi, ''Aur Prud. Clem. Opp.'' 1896, 1902, 2 vols. (Turin).

[W.L.]

Pseudo-Chrysostomus. Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum.—Among the works which have been ascribed to Chrysostom is a commentary on St. Matthew's Gospel. It is divided into 54 homilies; but this division does not proceed from the author, and (32, 132 ) the work was one intended, not for oral delivery, but to be read by persons from whom the writer was absent. The work is defective, wanting from the middle of the 13th to the end of the 19th chapter and breaking off at the end of the 25th. Hence its title, Opus Imperfectum, in distinction to the-genuine series of Chrysostom's 90 homilies on St. Matthew, which have been preserved complete. It is quoted as Chrysostom's by Nicolas I. (Respons. ad Bulg. Mansi, xv. 403) and other popes; and in the middle ages was accepted without doubt as his. In the Catena Aurea of Thomas Aquinas it is largely employed; and Fabricius quotes Dionysius the Carthusian as saying that he would rather have this imperfect work perfect than be lord of all Paris. Yet the author, far from being Chrysostom or any other orthodox divine, was undoubtedly a bitter Arian. Much of its heresy was hidden from many of its readers by the expurgations of successive transcribers and editors, and some parts may have been so deeply tainted with heresy that only, total excision would suffice. Some early critics, indeed, defended the genuineness of the expurgated form, contending that the passages found in some copies, where the doctrine of our Lord's equality with the Father is formally combated, had been but scribblings by an Arian in the margin of an orthodox writer, which through mistake had crept into the text. Some of the heretical passages can be cut out without injury to the context, but there remain many passages of undisputed genuineness in which the author unmistakably defines his position, and reveals himself as a member of a small persecuted sect which condemned the dominant church as heretical, and was in turn denounced as heretical by the state and as such visited with temporal penalties; and he marks the reign of Theodosius as the time when orthodoxy was overwhelmed and when what he calls the heresy of the Homoousians became triumphant (48, 199; 49, 20). It being clear that the author was not a member of the Catholic church, it is unreasonable to doubt the genuineness of the passages where he exhibits his Arianism, e.g. where he explains that our Lord called heretics "spinas et tribulos," because, foreseeing that heresy would prevail above all others, He called them "tribulos, quasi trinitatis professores et triangulam bajulantes impietatem." We must therefore regard the expurgation of the passages as probably due to their heterodoxy. It was not only the Arian passages which were expurgated. E.g. where the writer speaks (19, 93) of "offering the sacrifice of bread and wine," he is made to say "the sacrifice of Christ's body and blood"; and a passage is cut out altogether where he argues that if it be dangerous to transfer to private uses the consecrated vessels "which contain not the Lord's real body, but the mystery of His body," how much more to profane the vessels of our own body which God has prepared for His dwelling-place.

When the controversial passages had been expurgated, there was nothing to excite orthodox suspicions in our writer's language about our Lord's divinity. The Arians were not Unitarians, their doctrines, on the contrary, being open to the charge of Ditheism. Accordingly our writer uses very high language concerning our Lord, speaks of Him as "our great God and Saviour," as does also Maximinus, whose doctrine is in accurate accordance with that of the present work. His formula is "Deus genitus de ingenito Deo." Sometimes it is "unigenitus Deus" (μονογενὴς θεός). If in his controversial passages he is eager to argue that the Son, "to Whom all things were delivered by the Father," can neither be identical with the Father nor equal to Him, he is equally energetic in repelling the doctrine that He was mere man; and the heresy of the Homoousians is not more repro-