--- [log in to unmask] wrote:
> >At 20:44 16/11/99 -0500, you wrote:
>
> >Thanks for your comments. This is very interesting material. One
> question
>
> >it raises is to what the people whom Michael Psellos and others
> attacked
>
> >called themselves. When, if at all, did people begin again to say
> 'I
> am a
>
> >Gnostic'? Or was this just a potent polemical term used by the
> 'orthodox'?
>
> >
>
> >Ian Tompkins
>
> >
>
> >> I am in general agreement with what you have written.
> However,while
>
> >>"Gnostic" as standard charge in an arsenal of pre-primed,
> ready-made
>
> >>attacks,gave way to a new set of attacks gathered beneath the
> strident, and
>
> >>all- too-embracing cadences of post-Justinianic anti-monophysite
> rhetoric,
>
> >>Gnosticism, or at least attacks launched at what/who were called
> such
>
> >>seemed to have a rebirth in early Byzantine Scholasticism. Michael
>
> >>Psellos,( 11th/12thc) ( Peri ton Daemonon) lashes out against both
> the
>
> >>Gnostics and the "Hellenisthi", both of whom ( which?) he sees in
>
> >>resurgence in the aftermath of the iconophile/iconoclast debates,
> and
> in
>
> >>the immediate ( to him) light of the reopening of the Platonic
> Academy. It
>
> >>was very difficult for the iconoclasts to shed the accusations of
> rabid
>
> >>anti-materiality, and these accusations seemed to widen in scale
> and
> scope
>
> >>in the assessments of the 9th and 10th c iconophilic triumphalism.
> The
>
> >>debates surrounding the reopening of the Platonic Academy resonate
>
> with
>
> >>the same "anti-material" arguments heard in the iconoclast
> debates__
> only
>
> >>now aimed at Plato. The leap to accuse them of Gnosticism was not a
> grand
>
> >>jette. Although I certainly think the label "Gnostic'/'Gnosticism"
> had
>
> >>undergone a radical tranformation . While Post-Photian Byzantium is
>
> >>certainly not the world of the Cappadocians, whatever they saw as
> gnostics
>
> >>were still to be pointed out. It still packed quite a punch
>
> >>
>
> >>Josef Gulka . Josef Gulka
>
> >>[log in to unmask]
>
> >>215- 732-8420
>
> >>
>
> >>
>
> >
>
> >Ian G Tompkins, MA, BD, DPhil
>
> >Administrative Assistant
>
> >Academic Registrar's Office
>
> >~~~~~~~~
>
> >Warden
>
> >Neuadd Penbryn - Penbryn Hall
>
> >~~~~~~~~
>
> >Prifysgol Cymru - The University of Wales
>
> >Aberystwyth
>
> >~~~~~~~~
>
> >Email: [log in to unmask]
>
> >Tel: (01970-62)2047(day); 2900(eve)
>
> >Web: http://www.aber.ac.uk/~igt
>
>
> Ian:
>
> <underline>The</underline> question..eh! Although I am more
> interested
> in what it was they believed, they ( the referrants of observations
> like that of Psellus) called themselves scholars (teachers),
> lawyers,and philanthropists, and, of course, they marked temselves as
> pious Orthodox Christians. The statement "I am a Gnostic" ( as you
> suggest), like that of " I am a Dualist" ( as I suggest) became
> increasingly superfluous as an explicit ( public) self-identifier as
> both those 'isms' bunkered in quite readily as an implicit stance
> within 'orthodox' Christianity.
>
> As to its use as " a potent polemical term" : "Gnosticism", by virtue
> of its key
>
> modus operandi__ hide and seek___ had expanded its "pollutive threat"
> (
> Psellus;Symeon of Thessalonike)) to such a grand scale in the Byz.
> theological imagination, as to be seen as the "Mother virus", the
> Mother Alien whose children we have been attempting to cage.. It (
> Gnosticism... or whatever was so named) pushed all the buttons! It
> could be seen as spawning all other heretical thought. In the same
> manner as which the Byzantine (specifically, Constantinopolitan)
> hymnography commemorating the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical
> Council
> ( 787) conflated all the heresies collectively refuted by the
> aggregate
> Councils under " the heresy of Arius" ( as the Mother of all
> heresies),
> Gnosticism could be seen to engluf/ to have brought forth thought
> like
> that of Arius. So as polemic ( and I think all polemic is political)
> it
> served the "orthodox" quite effecively.
>
>
>
> Josef Gulka
>
> [log in to unmask]
>
> 215- 732-8420
>
>
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