medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (24. October) is the feast day of:
Proclus of Constantinople (d. 446). P. was a highly placed churchman, a
gifted orator, and a committed controversialist. Of the surviving
writings that are certainly his, the best known is Homily 1, the first
of five homilies advancing the doctrine of Mary as Theotokos.
Delivered, probably in 430, in the presence of the patriarch Nestorius,
who vigorously opposed the use of this epithet, it was appended to the
Acts of the Council of Ephesus in 431, which condemned Nestorius and
embraced both the epithet and the christological understanding advanced
by P. When he composed this elaborate sermon P., who had already twice
sought election as archbishop of Constantinople, was officially bishop
of Cyzicus, a post to which he had been named in 426 but was unable to
take up due to opposition there. In 434, on his fourth try, he was
elected archbishop of Constantinople.
As archbishop, P. continued to produce magnificent sermons and,
especially in his _Tome to the Armenians_ (435), advanced orthodox
christology against the views of the not-yet-condemned Theodore of
Mopsuestia (d. 428/29). He is traditionally credited with the
liturgical introduction of the Trisagion (the associated miracle story
is worth looking up). In 438 he officiated at the translation of the
body of the exiled St. John Chrysostom from Comana in Pontus to
Constantinople and its interment in that city's church of the Holy
Apostles. Later Byzantine tradition made P. one of Chrysostom's
disciples; contemporary evidence suggests otherwise. Eastern Orthodox
churches celebrate him on 20. November.
In Orthodox art P. is usually represented as a bearded, elderly man.
Here he is (less elderly than in other depictions) in the early
fourteenth-century frescoes in the altar area of the monastery church of
the Theotokos at Gračanica in Serbia's Kosovo province:
http://tinyurl.com/ygmu7k
An important study of P., with texts and English-language translations of
Homilies 1 through 5, is Nicholas Constas, _Proclus of Constantinople and
the Cult of the Virgin in Late Antiquity_ (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003).
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post very lightly revised)
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