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Prokop von Gaza: Der Genesiskommentar

In De Gruyter, Karin Metzler, Late Antiquity, Manuscripts, Patristics, Prokop von Gaza, Samuel Pomeroy on April 13, 2018 at 12:18 pm

PvG

2018.04.05 | Karin Metzler (ed). Prokop von Gaza. Eclogarum in libros historicos veteris testamenti epitome. Teil 1: Der Genesiskommentar. GCSnF, 22. Berlin–München–Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2015. Pp. clxiv + 490. Hardcover.

Reviewed by Samuel Pomeroy, KU Leuven.

Choricius of Gaza praised his predecessor Procopius (c. 470–530) as a pagan sophist. Procopius’s literary output confirms no less a picture. With the publication of the text under review, Karin Metzler has advanced the serious study of Procopius from another angle, that of the biblical exegete—or what the manuscript tradition calls ‘Procopius the Christian sophist’ (xxxi).

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The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy

In Oxford University Press, Philosophy, Samuel Pomeroy, Stephen Blackwood on June 16, 2016 at 4:17 pm

 

9780198718314

2016.06.10 | Stephen Blackwood. The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: OUP, 2015. Pp. xxi + 338. Soft-cover.

Review by Samuel Pomeroy, KU Leuven.

Thanks to Oxford University Press for providing a review copy.

According to Boethius, you are what you hear. If memory is integral to ethics (164–5), and hearing is integral to memory (169–71), then properly ordered poetry has the capacity to harmonize the dialectical nature of the intellect within the epistemological framework of creation (cf. 238). As the ars memorativa of the Trivium are the means by which sense and intellect are united (186), so too the complex metrical structure of Boethius’s Consolation is an invitation to perceive the particulars of cosmic harmony held together by divine providence (234). But it is not an invitation to silent, private reading towards esotericism. For Boethius the poet, the dialogical phonic dexterity of his Consolation’s meter is itself the gateway towards recollection. Read the rest of this entry »