>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:
The 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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