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Seeking Meaning Behind Epistolary Clichés: Intercessory Prayer Clauses in Christian Letters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Renie Choy*
Affiliation:
Pembroke College, Oxford

Extract

The letter, as the format of twenty-one of the twenty-seven documents in the canonical New Testament, is arguably the literary form which has played the most significant role in the history of Christianity. But scholars have often been troubled by how to treat the conventions framing Christian letters: since little of Christian literature from its earliest time to the medieval period escapes the influence of classical traditions of rhetoric, can constant epistolary formulas be taken as expressions of genuine sentiment? In fact, it is precisely because the lines between classical influence and Christian innovation are so difficult to make out that E. R. Curtius was able to argue that the humility formula of medieval charters, for so long assumed to have originated in Paul, was in fact a pagan Hellenistic prototype like scores of other rhetorical conventions. His study of the formula serves, Curtius writes, to ‘furnish a warning against making the Middle Ages more Christian or more pious than it was’, and to demonstrate that ‘a constant literary formula must not be regarded as the expression of spontaneous sentiment’. So the entrenchment of rhetoric in letter-writing is often set in opposition to genuine Christian feeling, commonplace utterance against living expression, empty verbiage against religious sincerity.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2012

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References

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3 Proclaiming the author’s paideia (his education and his cultural and intellectual sophistication), for example; see Miles, R., ‘Epistolography’, in Bowersock, G.W., Brown, R. L., and Grabar, O., eds, Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postdassical World (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 42849 Google Scholar.

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8 Wiles, Paul’s Intercessory Prayers, 158. These assurances of prayer are found in the ‘thanksgiving’ (eucharistō) segment of Paul’s letters, e.g. Rom. 1: 8–10; Phil. 1: 3–5; 1 Cor. 1: 4–9; 2 Cor. 1: iob-11; 1 Thess. 1: 2–10; 2 Thess. 1: 3–12. For Paul’s linking of intercession with thanksgiving, see Schubert, P., Form and Function of the Pauline Thanksgivings, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fur die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 20 (Berlin, 1939)Google Scholar.

9 Aune, D., ‘Epistolography’, in idem, ed., The Westminster Dictionary of New Testament and Early Christian Literature and Rhetoric (Louisville, KY, 2003), 1667 Google Scholar. For an extended analysis of the proskynēma prayer, see Koskenniemi, H., Studien zur Idee und Phraséologie des griechischen Briefes bis 400 n. Chr. (Helsinki, 1956), 13945 Google Scholar. See also Weima, J. A. D., Neglected Endings: The Significance of the Pauline Letter Closings, Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 101 (Sheffield, 1994)Google Scholar, ch. 2, for the development of this form. For examples of the proskynēma formula in first- to fourth-century papyri, see Stowers, S., Letter Writing in Greco-Roman Antiquity, Library of Early Christianity 5 (Philadelphia, PA, 1986)Google Scholar; Trapp, M., Greek and Latin Letters: An Anthology, with Translation, Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics (Cambridge, 2003)Google Scholar. This convention is also found in ancient Babylonian and Assyrian letters: Jastrow, M., Die Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens, 2 vols in 3 (Giessen, 1905–12)Google Scholar, 2: 521; Hesse, F., Die Fürbitte im Alten Testament (Hamburg, 1951), 84 Google Scholar.

10 For example: ‘We pray for those who are with us. Greet our brothers with you. We pray for your health in the Lord, beloved Papa’ (from the Oxyrhynchus papyri, manuscript P.Oxy. 2785) and ‘I pray for your health in the Lord God. Emmanuel is my witness. Amen!’ (P.Oxy. 1162); quoted in Stowers, Letter Writing, 157.

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14 Paulinus of Nola, Ep. 42 (CSEL 29, 361–3).

15 The literature on letter-writing in relation to friendship is extensive. On classical and late antiquity, see, e.g., Stowers, , Letter Writing; White, C., ‘Friendship in Absence -Some Patristic Views’, in Haseldine, J., ed., Friendship in Medieval Europe (Stroud, 1999), 6888 Google Scholar; Conybeare, C., Paulinus Noster: Self and Symbols in the Letters of Paulinus of Nola (Oxford, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the medieval period, see Knight, G., The Correspondence between Peter the Venerable and Bernard of Clairvaux: A Semantic and Structural Analysis (Aldershot, 2002)Google Scholar, ch. 1, ‘Letter-Writing and Friendship Reconsidered’; J. Leclerq, ‘L’Amitié dans les lettres au moyen âge’, Revue du Moyen Âge latin 1 (1945), 391–410; idem, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, transl. C. Misrahi (ET 1961; repr. New York, 1985; French original first publ. 1957), esp. 176–9 on monastic letter-writing; Goetz, H.-W., ‘“Beatus homo qui invenit amicum”: The Concept of Friendship in Early Medieval Letters of the Anglo-Saxon Tradition on the Continent (Boniface, Alcuin)’, in Haseldine, , ed., Friendship, 20715 Google Scholar.

16 Ambrose, Ep. 1 (PL 16, col. 877).

17 Alcuin, Ep. 179 (MGH Epp. 4, 297).

18 Augustine, Ep. 124 (CSEL 44, 2); transl. J. G. Cunningham, The Letters of St. Augustin, NPNF I 1, 452.

19 ‘ut pro nobis orare dignemini et id a communi domino peculiarius postulare, ut iam tandem aliquando in unum venire et nos videre mereamur’: Ruricius, Ep. 2.55 (CSEL 21, 436); transl. Mathisen, R., Ruricius of Limoges and Friends: A Collection of Letters from Visigothic Gaul, Translated Texts for Historians 30 (Liverpool, 1999), 2267 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 ‘plane quia nunc vobis in precibus efficacior sermo est et ad inpetrandum quod in pressuris petitur facilior orario est’ (‘since your word is more efficacious in prayer and since prayer is more efficient for obtaining what is sought through suffering’): Cyprian, Ep. 76 (CSEL 3/2, 833). Observe the similar phrase frequently used by Boniface, as here in Ep. 46 (MGH Epp. Sel. 1, 74): ‘praecibus pietatis vestrae impetrare’ (‘obtain by your holy prayers’).

21 Paulinus of Nola, Ep. 42 (CSEL 29, 362); transl. Walsh, P.G., Letters of Paulinus of Nola 2, ACW 36 (New York, 1966), 225 Google Scholar.

22 Jerome, Ep. 2 (CSEL 54, 11); transl. W. H. Fremande, G. Lewis and W. G. Mardey, Letters and Select Works, NPNF II 6, 4.

23 ‘quam per me impetrare non valeo, sed intercessione vestrae beatitudinis hanc me optinere confido’: Gregory I, Ep. 13.45 (MGH Epp. 1, 408); transl. Martyn, J., The Letters of Gregory the Great, 3 vols (Toronto, ON, 2004)Google Scholar, 3: 858.

24 ‘plus me vestris orationibus quam meis viribus adtingere posse confido’: Desiderius of Cahors, Ep. 1.11, in Epistulae S. Desiderii Cardurcensis, ed. D. Norberg, Studia Latina Stockholmiensia 6 (Stockholm, 1961), 30.

25 Avitus, Ep. 15 (MGH AA 6/2, 48); transl. Shanzer, D. and Wood, I., Avitus of Vienne: Selected Letters and Prose, Translated Texts for Historians 38 (Liverpool, 2002), 265 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 ‘mihi per aliqua verba tuae affabilitatis indica, quid de istis valeat precibus tua fraternitas perficere’: Boniface, Ep. 71 (MGH Epp. Sel. 1, 144).

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28 ‘Orantem te pro nobis potentia Domini nostri Iesu Christi conservare dignetur’: Desiderius, Ep. 1.12 (Epistulae, ed. Norberg, 32).

29 I use the term ‘creative activity’ specifically to refer to the causal effect which intercessory prayer between two individuals was believed to achieve. But see also Simpson’s, R. L. comments about prayer and the ‘creative activity at the human level’ in The Interpretation of Prayer in the Early Church (Philadelphia, PA, 1965), 1612 Google Scholar.

30 Cyril of Alexandria, Letter 45 (PG 77, col. 258); transl. McEnerney, J., St. Cyril of Alexandria: Letters, Fathers of the Church 76 (Washington, DC, 1987), 197 Google Scholar.

31 Theodoret, Letter 133 (SC 40, 126); transl. B. Jackson, in Theodoret, Jerome, Gennadius, Rufinus, NPNF II 3, 304. See also Letter 142 (SC 40,156; transl. Jackson, Theodoret, 309): ‘I beg you in the first place to support me with your prayers, and further to cheer me by a letter, for by God’s grace I have been attacked for the Gospel’s sake’.

32 Paulinus, Ep. 33 (CSEL 29, 302); transl. Walsh, Letters of Paulinus of Nola 2, 161.

33 Ruricius, Ep. 1.1 (CSEL 21, 352); transl. Mathisen, Ruricius, 89.

34 ‘Tamen obsecro in caritate Christi, ne me umquam consolatoriis vel oratoriis dimittas reficere litteris’: Alcuin, Ep. 9 (MGH Epp. 4, 35).

35 ‘Sed cum recordatus sim domini mei, vestri genitoris, beatae memoriae Karoll …, quorum memoriam in orationibus cotidianam facio, prout oportet – revocans animum hacque fretus fiducia, istas vobis direxi litterulas’: Dungalus Scottus, Ep. 7 (MGH Epp. 4, 582).

36 Jerome, Ep. 114 (CSEL 55, 395); transl. Fremande et al., NPNF II 6, 215.

37 Boniface, Ep. 86 (MGH Epp. Sel. 1, 194); transl. E. Emerton, The Letters of Saint Boniface (1940; rev. edn, New York, 2000), 159.

38 Boniface, Ep. 103 (MGH Epp. Sel. 1, 226); transl. Emerton, Letters, 153.

39 ‘Ac ideo vestra oratione atque omnipotentis Dei misericordia maxime indigeo, ne deficiam in tribulationibus, in necessitatibus, in periculis et in temptationibus diversis’: Hrabanus Maurus, Ep. 27 (MGH Epp. 5, 441–2).

40 Pelikan, J., The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600) (Chicago, IL, 1971)Google Scholar, 133–9. See Origen, De Oratione 5 (PG 11, col. 429–434);Tertullian, De Oratione 29 (PL 1, cols 1195–6).

41 See Miriam Dobson’s comments in ‘Letters’, in eadem, and Ziemann, B., eds, Reading Primary Sources: The Interpretation of Texts from Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century History (London, 2009), 5773 Google Scholar, at 62–4.

42 G. Spiegel, ‘History, Historicism and the Social Logic of the Text in the Middle Ages’, Speculum 65 (1990), 59–86, at 77.

43 Clark, E., History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn (Cambridge, MA, 2004)Google Scholar, esp. 178–81.

44 Gregory I, Ep. 8.29 (MGH Epp. 1, 30); transl. Martyn, 2: 524.