2. Episcopate

The old friendship seems, however, to have grown less warm after Basil was promoted to the metropolitan see, and suffered a harder blow when Basil, apparently soon after Easter, 372, forced Gregory to accept the bishopric of Sasima, an insignifi cant place between Nazianzus and Tyana, in order to hold it against Anthimus, bishop of Tyana, who infringed upon Basil's dignity by claiming and so tually exercising metropolitan rights over a portion of Cappadocia. Gregory retired from his bishopric to the solitude of the mountains before he had en tered upon its duties, declining to take up the strug gle with Anthimus. He rejected his father's en treaties that he should return to his post; but when he was asked to come and help at Nazianzus, filial duty and appreciation of a larger field prevailed upon him in the same summer of 372. After his father's death, he continued to officiate there, but only as his father's representative. When, how ever, the neighboring bishops showed no signs of appointing another incumbent, he again fled in 375, this time to Seleucia. There he seems to have remained until, after the death of Basil (Jan. 1, 379), he was called to undertake a task sufficiently important to tempt him from his retirement. This was no less than to represent the Nicene faith in Constantinople, heretofore abandoned to Arianism. When in the spring of 379 he began to preach in the capital, he was undoubtedly considered as an aspirant for the bishop's throne; but his natural wavering between the attraction of usefulness in the world and that of the hermit life hindered him from considering himself consistently in that light. Still, it would appear from the whole history of his conflict with Maximus, a false friend who now came forward as a rival, and of the council of 381 that he had definitely put forward his candidacy. He was practically bishop there from the time (Nov. 26, 380) when the cathedral church of the Apostles was placed in his charge; officially he held the position only for a short time during the ses sion of the council in the following year. After his renunciation of the office he left the capital, probably in June, before the close of the council, and retired to Cappadocia. His interest in the dio-

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ease of Nazianzus, then troubled by the Apollinarians, induced him to give some measure of attention to its needs; but after he had succeeded (probably in 383) in procuring the appointment of his kinsman Eulalius as bishop, he lived in seclusion, apparently at Arianzus. When Jerome wrote his Catalogus in 392, he had been dead nearly three years, and so must have passed away in 389 or at latest 390.

The works of Gregory fall into three groups-45 orations, 243 letters, and a considerable number of poems. The orations seem all to have been actually delivered except the two invectives against Julian, and the second oration, at least in its present form. The most famous are the five "Theological Orations" (xxvii.-xxxi.) delivered in Constantinople. Of historical interest are several of the memorial orations, especially those on Basil (xliii.) and on his father (xviii.). Among 3. Works. those written for festivals, the most noteworthy are the Easter sermon of 363 (commonly assigned to 362), and three (xxxviii, xl.) preached in Constantinople on Dec. 25, 379. and Jan. 6 and 7, 380; the first of these three is the earliest Christmas sermon known to have been preached in Constantinople, or, for that matter, in the East. Only one (xxxvii.) has the nature of a homily; in fact, the exposition of Scripture, or in general what is usually meant by preaching, is en tirely subordinate to rhetorical declamation. The letters, most of which belong to the last six or seven years of Gregory's life, are as a rule short and not to be compared for interest or historical importance to those of Basil. Of dogmatic value are the two anti-Apollinarian epistles to the pres byter Cledonius (ci., cii.) and the last of those ad dressed to Gregory's successor at Constantinople, Nectarius (ecii.). The concluding. letter, or rather treatise, "To the Monk Evagrius on Divinity;" which is ascribed by the manuscript variously to Gregory Nazianzen, to the other Gregories, Thauma turgus and of Nyssa, and to Basil, can scarcely be long to Gregory Nazianzen. The poems are good examples of the artificial poetry of the rhetori cal school, but to a modern mind most of them have very little that is poetical. The autobiographical poems (book ii., section 1) comprise about a third of the whole. The drama known as "The Suffering Christ" has long been known to be not Gregory's, but a Byzantine production of the eleventh or twelfth century.

Though Gregory Nazianzen is called "the Theologian" by the Greek writers, he has given no systematic exposition of the Christian faith; and an examination of the doctrinal positions 4. Theological taken by him in his orations would be profitable only if it were connected Attitude. with an investigation, here impossi ble, of the question how far he dis plays the result of the process of giving an ecclesi astical form to the thoughts of Origen; though the Origenistic tradition has certainly not in him come down to the level of the popular catholicism of his day, as is clearly evidenced by his views on sin, the fall of man, Paradise, inequality on earth as a result of the fall, the doctrine of angels, and eschar tology. His general doctrine of God is Platonic metaphysics rather than Christian teaching. It is noteworthy what a contrast there is between the way in which, against Eunomius, he maintains the unknowableness of God and the certainty with which he develops the details of the doctrine of the Trinity. In this latter field he is not, indeed, the founder of the school known as sub-Nicene, for before he took any prominent part in the discussion, during the reign of Julian, the transition from the hmnmusios to the homoausim had taken place in the Meletian group at Antioch (see Meletius of Antioch); and the analogous development in many homoiousians of Asia Minor, at least in regard to the consubstantiality of the Son, was certainly in the main- independent of Gregory's influence. Still, Gregory was the oldest of the theologically important representatives of that school, and its special teaching comes out clearly in him at a time when Basil was yet on friendly terms with Eustathius and when Gregory of Nyssa was a layman. This is true even of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit; although Gregory was all his life a little cautious about defining the consubstantiality, from a feeling that the consequences would lead beyond what was contained in Scripture, even though he never excluded the necessity of these consequences. To state his doctrine in its technical terms, it is based upon the distinction between the One Godhead, Substance, or Nature (mia theotea, ousia, or physis) and the Three Persons (hvis hypostaaeis or idiotWa). The term ousia means more than the generic essence of several individuals; but none the less the treis hypostaseis are numerically three, and the One God is one because the mia theotes is common to the three, because the Son and the Spirit have their origin in the Father outside of time, and because the will of the three is the same. The things which distinguish the three-"that the Father is unbegotten, that the Son is begotten, that the Holy Ghost is sent forth" (oration xxv.) -are not, therefore, differences of substance, but expressions of the mutual relation of the hypostdseis. That the reproach of tritheism might be brought against this teaching with more justice than that of Sabellianism against Athanasius is obvious. Gregory was fully conscious of the divergence between the older and later Nicene theology, but he considered it purely one of terminology.

That Gregory should have been able to coin standard formulas in Christology also (the Council of Ephesus and that of Chalcedon cite his first epistle to Cledonius, and under Justinian he was one of the principal witnesses to the g. Christo- orthodox view on this question) was logical due to the process through which he Attitude. passed in his last years. The casual expressions of his orations are the ob scure utterances of a curtailed Origenistic tradition. His terminology did not become clear and precise until after he had taken his stand in oppo. sition to Apollinarianism, and felt the need of re jecting the Antiochene tradition (opposed also by Apollinaris) of the existence of two subjects in the historic Christ. He is now clear on the point of the completeness of the human nature in Christ,

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though he holds firmly that the historic Christ is nothing but the Logos-subject made man. His formulas, though even then they were perhaps not fully thought out, suited the needs of later ortho doxy; and in fact to some extent he anticipated the differentiation which took place in Christology also between the terms physis and hypoatasia. The orthodoxy of Justinian's reign needed but to point to his assertion that the trinitarian formula was the converse of the Christologieal-that where in the former there were three hypostases and one nature, in the latter there were two natures and but one hypostasis.

In the matter of ChrisWlogy, Gregory owes his reputation as "the Theologian" for the greater part to chance. His position is somewhat better merited in regard to theology in the narrower sense -though even here it can not be denied that he who complained at unnecessary length in his life time of misconception and ingratitude has since his death, and especially since the sixth century, been more richly indemnified than he really de served.

(F. Loofs.)

Bibliography: The edition of the Opera by Clemenaet (vol. i., Paris, 1778) and Caillau (vol, ii., ib. 1840), supersedes all earlier collections, and was reproduced in MPG, xxxv. xxxviii. Worthy of notice, besides that edition, are Opera . . . Grow et Latins, 2 vols., Paris, 1809, and 3 vols., ib. 1Q38; of. Fabricius-Harles, Bibliotheca Gras, viii. 892-403, Hamburg, 1802. Editions of separate works are: Carmina aeieeta, ed. E. Dronke, Göttingen, 1840; Opera dogmatica selecta, ed. C. Thilo, 2 vols., Leip sie, 1854; Oratio swunda apolopetica, ed. J. Alsog, Freiburg, 1858-88; Oratio optima in laudem CdaarM, ed. E. Sommer, Paris, 1891; Oratio in laudem Machabmorum, ed. E. Sommer, Paris, 1891. Some of his poems are in Anthelogia Gram carminum Chnrtianorum, by W. Christ and M. Paranikae, Leipsic, 1871, and other poems by W. Meyer, in AMA, philowphiash-philologieche Klaus, EVIL 2 (1885), 285 sqq., Beilw i. 400-109; Five Theological Orations, ed. A. J. Masson, London, 1899; an Eng. transl. of selected orations and letters, with life and prolegomena, are in NPNF, ?d sec., vol. vii. Sources for a Life are his own Carmina de as ipso and Carmina de vita ass; a Vita Greporii by Gregory ,the Presbyter, in MPG, mcv. 243-304; and the church his torians of the fifth century. The two later biographies which are essential are C. Ullmann, Greporisa von Natians, der Theologe, Darmstadt, 1825, Eng. transl., London, 1851, and A. Benoit, S. Grpoire de Nasiante, 2 vols., Paris, 1885. Consult, ASB, May, ii. 373-428; Tillemont, Mémoire, ix. 305-380, 892-731; W. Cave, Lives of &s Fathers, iii. 1-90, Oxford, 1840; A. Grenier, La Vie et lee pohsies de S. Grégoire de Naaianae, Paris, 1868; J. H. Newman, Church of the Fathers, London, 1888; idem, Historical Sketches, vol. iii., chaps. iii. iv., ib. 1873; H. Weise, Die proem Kappadocier Baailius, Gregor von Na sians . . . alt Exepeten, Leipsic, 1872; L. Montaut, Re vue critique do qualquea questions histortquea as rapportant d S. Grégoire . . . et h son eOcle, Paris, 1878; C. Ca vaillier. S. Grégoire do Nazianee, par 1'abU A. Benoit. .9tude bibliographique, Montpellier, 1886; F. W. Farrar, Lives of the Fathers, f. 491-582, New York, 1889; J. DrAeeke, in TSK, lxv (1892), 478-512; J. R. Asmus, in T$K, ixvii (1894), 814-339; 0. Bardenhewer, Patrologie,, Freiburg. 1901; Ceillier, Auteurs sacrés, v. 172-383, ef. iv. passim; Neander, Christian Church, ii. 482-488 et passim; Schaff, Christian Church, iii. 908-921; Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chap. xvii.; DCB, ii. 741-761 (elaborate); KL, v. 1180-88. From the standpoint of dogma, consult: 'J. Hergen rather, Die Lakre von der oattlichen Dreiednigkeit reach dem beiligen Gregor von Nations, Regensburg, 1850; H. Weiss' ut sup.; F. K. HOmmer, Des heiligen Gregor . . . Lehre von der Gnade, Kempten, 1890; Harnack. Dogma, vols. iii.iv.