medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Thursday, May 20, 2010, at 7:43 pm, Jim Bugslag wrote apropos Lucifer of Cagliari (d. ca. 371):
> Please allow me to introduce a bit of a problem here. Is it just me,
> or is this a particularly weird name for a saint of wealth and taste?
> Isn't the devil called Lucifer in the Bible itself? How would a
> Christian of that time end up with a name like that? It's sort of
> like an American family naming their child Osama, or something, isn't
> it?
> Cheers,
> Jim
1. I'm not aware of any passage in the Bible where the Devil is actually called Lucifer (or the equivalent in Hebrew or in Greek). In the apostrophe at Isaiah 14:12:
http://bible.cc/isaiah/14-12.htm
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/poly/isa014.htm
the prophet's addressee (_Lucifer_ in the Vulgate and in many English-language translations) is apparently a Babylonian king. Though Christian exegesis that's at least as old as Tertullian and Origen commonly interprets this as a reference to Satan, the text itself would not seem to advance such an identification.
2. _Lucifer_ (literally 'light-bringer') is a common Latin term for the morning star or daystar (Venus as observed matutinally). In the Vulgate, for example, it's used not only at Isaiah 14:12 but also (lower-case) at 2 Peter 1:19:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/poly/pe2001.htm
where the referent is surely not Satan.
3. Lucifer of Cagliari's parents, if they knew their Bible, would thus have had no reason to suppose that this synonym for the morning star (if that's what the Old Latin text used in their community actually read where the later St. Jerome uses _Lucifer_/_lucifer_) would automatically imply Satan.
4. If, as seems reasonable to suppose, Lucifer of Cagliari's parents lived in a community where Lucifer (or some non-Latin equivalent, e.g. Greek Φωσφόρος [Phosphoros]) already existed in the onomastic repertoire, the Biblical uses might have had little or no influence on how they named their son the future bishop (or, if L.'s parents were not Christian, on L.'s later choice to retain this name). Greek Φωσφόρος and Latin _Phosphorus_ occur as divine names in e.g. Syria and Dacia (we are uninformed as to L.'s ancestry) and a human Lucifer the son of P[h]osporus is attested in a Latin inscription from the city of Rome (_CIL_, VI. 8724).
Best,
John Dillon
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