Apocryphal Traditions in Gregory of Tours’ Glory of the Martyrs

May 18, 2021 by Tony

I’ve spent the better part of the past two months polishing up my paper for the published proceedings of the Material of Christian Apocrypha conference that took place at the University of Virginia back in December 2018 (summary HERE and HERE). The paper is called “What They Brought Back Home: Pilgrimage Souvenirs as Transmitters of Christian Apocrypha.” From late antiquity and through the medieval period, pilgrims journeyed to various sacred sites—some of which are based purely on apocryphal traditions—and would hear stories associated with the saint and/or the site, see and touch its architectural and decorative features, participate in some kind of veneration, purchase one or more souvenirs (a token, a medal, or an ampulla, perhaps even a copy of text), and return home. There they might tell (or boast) about their experience and even proudly display their souvenirs.

Some pilgrims wrote about their experiences, and plenty of these pilgrimage itineraries survive today, including Egeria and the Piacenza Pilgrim. One writer on pilgrimage who is frequently passed over in discussions of pilgrimage is Gregory of Tours (ca. 538–594 CE). Gregory is best known in our field as the (likely) author of an epitome of the Acts of Andrew, offering us vital information for what the original text, now mostly lost, contained. Gregory also wrote seven books relating stories of saints and miracles that they or their relics performed. One of these books is the Glory of the Martyrs (English trans. Raymond van Dan, Gregory of Tours: Glory of …

Apocryphal Acts in Syriac Manuscripts

May 7, 2021 by Tony

I would like to thank Jacob Lollar, J. Edward Walters, and Slavomir Céplö for looking over a draft of this post and making suggestions for improvement.

In my last post, back in December, I provided an overview of sources for the “Egyptian” collection of the apocryphal acts of the apostles—manuscripts in Coptic, Arabic, and Ge‘ez. A follow-up was promised, and I will get to that soon, but for now I am taking a detour with a discussion of apocryphal acts in Syriac. Both posts derive from ongoing work on my next major project: an introduction to Christian apocrypha for the Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library.

The number of texts and manuscripts for the Syriac apocryphal acts is significantly smaller than for the Egyptian corpus. The path of transmission is somewhat simpler also: the Egyptian collection began in Coptic and after the decline of Coptic in Upper Egypt, the texts were translated into Arabic, then Ethiopic. Syriac apocrypha follows a simpler path, with Syriac remaining the liturgical language (and for a small group, the spoken language) of the East and West Syriac churches, and some translation occurring into Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, and Tamil. Apocryphal texts have been transmitted in Syriac throughout the history of Syriac Christianity and appear in manuscripts created as recently as the twentieth century.

But the apocryphal acts appear with less frequency than some other apocrypha, such as texts about the Virgin Mary. Of the Five Great Apocryphal Acts, only the Acts of Thomas is represented in …