Patmos in the Reception History of the Apocalypse (Oxford Theology and Religion Monographs) [Illustrated] 9780199674206, 0199674205

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
List of Plates
Abbreviations
Introduction
Overview of the Book
Definition of Terms
Method
1. ‘I was on the Island Called Patmos’: Re-reading Rev. 1:9
Introduction
(omitted)
(omitted)
(omitted)
(omitted)
(omitted)
Possible Patmos Allusions elsewhere in Apocalypse
Conclusion
2. Patmos in Early Patristic Tradition (2nd–5th Centuries)
Introduction
Patmos as Place of Exile
Patmos as Place of Privileged Revelation
Patmos in Apocryphal Acts and Lives
Conclusion
3. Patmos in Early Medieval Latin Tradition (6th–10th Centuries)
Introduction
Patmos as Place of Exile
Patmos as Place of Privileged Revelation
Allegorical Interpretations of Patmos
Conclusion
4. Patmos in Later Medieval Latin Tradition (1000–1516)
Introduction
Patmos as Place in the Biography of John
Patmos as Appropriate Location for Vision
Ecclesial Interpretations
Patmos as Fretum
Three Anonymous Mendicant Commentaries
Actualization of John’s Patmos Experience: Francis of Assisi
Patmos in Rev. 10
Patmos in Western Medieval Liturgy and Devotion
Conclusion
5. Patmos in Eastern Traditions from the 5th Century
Introduction
Patmos as Narrative World: the Acts of John by Prochorus
Patmos in the Greek Commentary Tradition
The Cave Tradition: Addition to the Prochorus Acts
Oriental Orthodox Traditions
Patmos as Monastic Ideal: Writings of St Christodoulos
Conclusion
6. Patmos in Western Interpreters from 1517
Introduction
Biographical Interest
Geographical and Topographical Interest in Patmos
Patmos and Persecution
Actualization of Patmos: Martin Luther
Significance of the Name ‘Patmos’
Patmos and the Poets
Patmos in Post-1900 Historical-Critical Commentaries
Conclusion
7. Visual Interpretations of Patmos
Introduction
Visual Exegesis
Early Medieval Examples
Anglo-Norman Apocalypses
Douce Apocalypse
Other Late Medieval Examples
Eastern Iconography
Renaissance and Early Modern Paintings and Altarpieces
Hieronymus Bosch, St John on Patmos (c.1485–1500)
Sandro Botticelli, San Marco Altarpiece (c.1490)
Hans Burgkmair the Elder, St John the Evangelist on Patmos (1508/1518)
Diego Velázquez, St John the Evangelist on the Island of Patmos (1618–1619)
Conclusion
8. Hermeneutical Reflections
Introduction
Revisiting the ‘Potential of the Text’
Different Patterns of Interpretation
Prospective: Wider Implications of the Present Study
Appendix 1: Patmos in Modern Commentators
Appendix 2: The ‘Pre-Johannine’ Reception: Patmos in Classical Sources and Inscriptions
Bibliography
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
U
V
W
Y
Z

Citation preview

OXFORD THEOLOGY AND RELIGION MONOGRAPHS Editorial Committee J. BARTON M. J. EDWARDS P. S. FIDDES G. D. FLOOD D. N. J. MACCULLOCH C. C. ROWLAND

OXFORD THEOLOGY AND RELIGION MONOGRAPHS HINDU THEOLOGY AND BIOLOGY The Bhāgavata Purāna and Contemporary Theory ˙ Jonathan B. Edelmann (2012) ETHNICITY AND THE MIXED MARRIAGE CRISIS IN EZRA 9–10 An Anthropological Approach Katherine E. Southwood (2012) DIVINE PRODUCTION IN LATE MEDIEVAL TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY Henry of Ghent, Duns Scotus, and William Ockham JT Paasch (2012) THE SALVATION OF ATHEISTS AND CATHOLIC DOGMATIC THEOLOGY Stephen Bullivant (2012)

COMEDY AND FEMINIST INTERPRETATION OF THE HEBREW BIBLE A Subversive Collaboration Melissa A. Jackson (2012) THE STORY OF ISRAEL IN THE BOOK OF QOHELET Ecclesiastes as Cultural Memory Jennie Barbour (2012) THE ANTI-PELAGIAN CHRISTOLOGY OF AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO, 396-430 Dominic Keech (2012) VISIONARY RELIGION AND RADICALISM IN EARLY INDUSTRIAL ENGLAND From Southcott to Socialism Philip Lockley (2012) REPENTANCE IN LATE ANTIQUITY Eastern Asceticism and the Framing of the Christian Life c.400–650 CE Alexis C. Torrance (2012) SCHELLING’S THEORY OF SYMBOLIC LANGUAGE Forming the System of Identity Daniel Whistler (2013)

Patmos in the Reception History of the Apocalypse IAN BOXALL

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries # Ian Boxall 2013 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2013 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available ISBN 978–0–19–967420–6 Printed in Great Britain by the MPG Printgroup, UK

For Chris Rowland teacher, mentor, friend

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Acknowledgements The writing of this book, and of the doctoral thesis of which it is a revision, has been a voyage of rich and often surprising discoveries, as exhilarating as my first journey to the terrestrial island of Patmos over a decade ago. Like all travellers, I stand in profound debt to wise guides who helped me to chart an initial route, or to modify my course in order to encounter new terrain, and to fellow travellers who helped me along the way. Many academic colleagues have encouraged me in the project and helped sharpen my thinking, among them Peter Anthony, John Ashton, Jonathan Downing, John Jarick, Nick King SJ, Judith Kovacs, Bob Morgan, Natasha O’Hear, and Sean Ryan. I also wish to express my thanks to staff and students at St Stephen’s House for their ongoing and enthusiastic support, and especially to Robin Ward, Damian Feeney, and Lucy Gardner for their friendship and advice, and their generosity in providing sabbatical cover during the final writing-up stages of the original thesis. Lucy’s wise, careful, and incisive comments on various drafts of the introduction and final chapter have resulted in a vastly improved final version, for which I am hugely grateful. Thanks are due to my assessors at various stages of the doctoral process (Markus Bockmuehl, John Muddiman, Mark Edwards, and Chris Tuckett) for their critical encouragement and sage advice. John Muddiman also served as examiner for the DPhil, along with David Brown: I wish to record my gratitude to both for their enthusiasm for the project, and for their wise, perceptive, and generous feedback. I am also profoundly indebted to the Oxford Theological Monographs Committee, especially Diarmaid MacCulloch and Oxford University Press’s anonymous reader, for recommending the book for publication, and to the staff at the Press, especially Tom Perridge and Lizzie Robottom. The support of my family and friends, most especially that of William Whittaker, has been invaluable in convincing me that I could bring the research to a conclusion. As ever, my greatest debt is to my supervisor, mentor and book adviser, Chris Rowland, from his initial encouragement to me to embark on a doctorate amidst a busy teaching job, to his immense kindness, limitless wisdom, and infectious enthusiasm, all of which have encouraged me at every stage of the research for, and writing of, this monograph. It is a delight and a privilege to be able to dedicate this book to him. I am grateful to Bloodaxe Books for permission to quote from David Constantine’s translation of Friedrich Hölderlin’s ‘Patmos’, originally published in Friedrich Hölderlin, trans. David Constantine, Selected Poems

viii

Acknowledgements

(Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1990). I am also grateful to Ashgate for permission to use a revised table from my article ‘Exile, Prophet, Visionary: Ezekiel’s Influence on the Book of Revelation,’ in Henk Jan de Jonge and Johannes Tromp (eds), The Book of Ezekiel and its Influence (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 147–164.

Contents List of Plates Abbreviations Introduction Overview of the Book Definition of Terms Method

xii xiii 1 3 6 9

1. ‘I was on the Island Called Patmos’: Re-reading Rev. 1:9 Introduction
¯ªg
øÅ . . . KªÅ K B fi  ø fi ... . . . B fi ŒÆº ı fi
— ø fi Øa e ºª  F Ł F ŒÆd c Ææ ıæÆ
Å F KªÅ K Æ Ø K B fi ŒıæØÆŒB fi  æÆ fi Possible Patmos Allusions elsewhere in Apocalypse Conclusion

14 14 14 16 19 22 24 25 27

2. Patmos in Early Patristic Tradition (2nd–5th Centuries) Introduction Patmos as Place of Exile Patmos as Place of Privileged Revelation Patmos in Apocryphal Acts and Lives Conclusion

28 28 31 45 49 55

3. Patmos in Early Medieval Latin Tradition (6th–10th Centuries) Introduction Patmos as Place of Exile Patmos as Place of Privileged Revelation Allegorical Interpretations of Patmos Conclusion

56 56 58 62 70 74

4. Patmos in Later Medieval Latin Tradition (1000–1516) Introduction Patmos as Place in the Biography of John Patmos as Appropriate Location for Vision Ecclesial Interpretations Patmos as Fretum

75 75 76 80 84 86

x

Contents Three Anonymous Mendicant Commentaries Actualization of John’s Patmos Experience: Francis of Assisi Patmos in Rev. 10 Patmos in Western Medieval Liturgy and Devotion Conclusion

88 92 96 97 103

5. Patmos in Eastern Traditions from the 5th Century Introduction Patmos as Narrative World: the Acts of John by Prochorus Patmos in the Greek Commentary Tradition The Cave Tradition: Addition to the Prochorus Acts Oriental Orthodox Traditions Patmos as Monastic Ideal: Writings of St Christodoulos Conclusion

105 105 106 114 117 121 128 131

6. Patmos in Western Interpreters from 1517 Introduction Biographical Interest Geographical and Topographical Interest in Patmos Patmos and Persecution Actualization of Patmos: Martin Luther Significance of the Name ‘Patmos’ Patmos and the Poets Patmos in Post-1900 Historical-Critical Commentaries Conclusion

133 133 134 145 152 157 160 162 170 176

7. Visual Interpretations of Patmos Introduction Visual Exegesis Early Medieval Examples Anglo-Norman Apocalypses Douce Apocalypse Other Late Medieval Examples Eastern Iconography Renaissance and Early Modern Paintings and Altarpieces Hieronymus Bosch, St John on Patmos (c.1485–1500) Sandro Botticelli, San Marco Altarpiece (c.1490) Hans Burgkmair the Elder, St John the Evangelist on Patmos (1508/1518) Diego Velázquez, St John the Evangelist on the Island of Patmos (1618–1619) Conclusion

177 177 178 179 181 184 188 190 195 197 201 203 205 207

Contents

xi

8. Hermeneutical Reflections Introduction Revisiting the ‘Potential of the Text’ Different Patterns of Interpretation Prospective: Wider Implications of the Present Study

209 209 212 217 224

Appendix 1: Patmos in Modern Commentators Appendix 2: The ‘Pre-Johannine’ Reception: Patmos in Classical Sources and Inscriptions Bibliography Index

230 232 235 267

List of Plates Plate 1. The Douce Apocalypse, p. 1, John woken by the Angel on Patmos. Bodl. Douce MS 180 (c.1270). # Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, 2012. Plate 2. Mural at the entrance to the Cave of the Apocalypse, Patmos. # 2012. Photo DeAgostini Picture Library/SCALA, Florence. Plate 3. Hieronymus Bosch, St John on Patmos (c.1485–1500). Gemälde Galerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin. Photo: Jörg P. Anders. # 2012. Photo SCALA, Florence/BPK, Bildagentur für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Berlin. Plate 4. Hieronymus Bosch, Scenes from the Passion. Reverse of St John on Patmos. Gemälde Galerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin. # bpk/Gemäldegalerie, SMB/Jörg P. Anders. Plate 5. Sandro Botticelli, Coronation of the Virgin (c.1490). Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. # 2012. Photo SCALA, Florence—courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att. Culturali. Plate 6. Sandro Botticelli, Coronation of the Virgin: predella with St John on Patmos (c.1490). Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. # 2012. Photo SCALA, Florence—courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att. Culturali. Plate 7. Hans Burgkmair the Elder, St John the Evangelist on Patmos (1508/1518). Alte Pinakothek, Munich. # 2012. Photo SCALA, Florence/BPK, Bildagentur für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Berlin. Plate 8. Diego Velázquez, St John the Evangelist on the Island of Patmos (1618–1619). Bought with a special grant and contributions from the Pilgrim Trust and The Art Fund, 1956. # The National Gallery, London.

Abbreviations Adv. Haer.

Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses

Ant.

Josephus, Antiquitates Judaicae

AV

Authorized Version

De Praescr.

Tertullian, De Praescriptione Haereticorum

Geog.

Strabo, The Geography

H.E.

Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica

NAS

New American Standard Bible

N.H.

Pliny the Elder, Natural History

NIV

New International Version

NJB

New Jerusalem Bible

NRSV

New Revised Standard Version

Pel. War

Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

RSV

Revised Standard Version

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Introduction John’s island of Patmos (Rev. 1:9) has left a deep impression on the Christian imagination, disproportionate to its physical size and its significance in antiquity.1 In Eastern Christianity, the island has become an important place of pilgrimage and provided the geographical setting for a popular set of apocryphal Acts, the Acts of John by Prochorus. More widely, travellers and explorers have considered the possible implications of the topography of the island for the interpretation of the Apocalypse,2 and travel books continue to extol its virtues as ‘the Jerusalem of the Aegean’.3 In the West, Patmos has provided the backdrop, and sometimes the foreground, to a significant number of paintings of St John, whilst Martin Luther, despite his wellknown suspicion of the Apocalypse, interpreted his time in the Wartburg as ‘my Patmos’.4 Meanwhile, such are the associations of this island location that the scholarly literature regularly describes the author of Revelation simply as ‘John of Patmos’. Yet little sense of this rich and diverse cultural impact would be gained from reading modern scholarship on the Book of Revelation. On the contrary, the treatment of Patmos in recent critical commentaries is bewilderingly brief. This fact is especially puzzling given that one key concern of the historicalcritical method is the recovery of authorial context. When read through a historical-critical lens, the Apocalypse appears to be one of those rare New Testament writings which locate their author geographically.5 John’s presence ‘on the island called Patmos’ (Rev. 1:9), whether that describes the actual place

1 On the history, geography and topography of Patmos, see Georgirenes 1677; Guérin 1856; Tozer 1890; Geil 1897; Haussoullier 1902; Volonakis 1922; Schmidt 1949; Hope Simpson and Lazenby 1970; Saffrey 1975; Stone 1981. 2 Guérin 1856; Stanley 1863; Bidez and Parmentier n.d.; Tozer 1890: 189; Runciman 1989. 3 E.g. Bowman et al. 2008: 16. 4 Bainton 1950: 197. 5 Other texts whose place of writing may be located with some degree of certainty are Romans (Rom. 16:1, 23; cf. 1 Cor. 1:14), 1 Corinthians (1 Cor. 16:8), 1 Thessalonians (1 Thess. 3:1; Acts 17:1–18:1), and 1 Peter (1 Pet. 5:13).

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Patmos in the Reception History of the Apocalypse

of writing, simply the location of his inaugural vision,6 or the fictional location of the implied author,7 roots the text explicitly in a specific geographical and social setting.8 Moreover, the set of questions posed to the text by historical-critical commentators is surprisingly limited, with the exegesis often getting sidetracked into background issues of geography and authorial identity rather than consideration of what Patmos might mean, and discouraging reader participation in favour of ‘detached’ historical reconstruction. Most commentators will locate the island in the wider geography of the Aegean, and conclude that John was present on the island as an exile; they may also debate Patmos’s purported status as a recognized place of banishment or penal colony, and the implications of this for John’s social status.9 Few stray beyond these narrow parameters to consider questions of significance. By way of illustration, I offer in Appendix 1 the results of a survey of post-1900 commentaries on Rev. 1:9. This book is an attempt to redress the balance. It is written out of the conviction that attention to the diverse receptions of John’s visionary text throughout history will open up possibilities for interpretation long forgotten by the ‘received wisdom’ of the academy. Specifically, it sets out to identify the variety of ways in which interpreters of the Apocalypse over the centuries have invested John’s island with significance. The resulting catalogue of interpretations reveals a range of hermeneutical possibilities much richer than those suggested by the modern commentaries, thus posing challenging questions to the ways in which contemporary exegetes regularly approach their task. The priority in this monograph is to provide as comprehensive a guide as possible to the significance accorded to Patmos by interpreters of John’s book. Thus space will not allow for close consideration of the milieu and motives of all the interpreters, although these have been borne in mind in the collation and interpretation of the material. Significant and particularly interesting exemplars will be examined in more detail, with explicit discussion of their contexts and concerns. 6

Several scholars interpret the aorist as evidence that John was no longer on Patmos: e.g. Charles 1920: I, 21; Bonsirven 1951: 95, n. 2; Beasley-Murray 1974: 64; Smalley 2005: 50. However, the tense is appropriate to John’s narration of a past event: Krodel 1989: 93. 7 For this scenario, see van Kooten 2007: 240. He considers the possibility that the author of Revelation has chosen Patmos as setting for the visions because of its proximity to Asia, or its location in the Rome-dominated sea, or because of the associative link between B  and æÅ  (B  Kæ Å being well-attested in Greek literature). 8 See also the thesis of E. Lipiński, that the author writes pseudonymously as John the Apostle, and that in the narrative ‘John’ is on Patmos, not literally, but ‘in the spirit’ (as he also travels ‘in the spirit’ to heaven, the wilderness and the high mountain: Rev. 4:2; 17:3; 21:10): Lipiński 1969: 225. 9 A more detailed survey of such discussions will be offered at the appropriate chronological point, at the end of Chapter 6.

Introduction

3

A second aim of this work is to reflect explicitly on the task undertaken, in order to illustrate the wider implications of what might appear a narrow reception-historical study for the interpretation of the Book of Revelation, and for New Testament interpretation more generally. In particular, I hope to justify the claim that attention to reception history is ‘an integral and indeed inescapable part’ of the quest for understanding New Testament texts,10 offering an account of the meaning(s) of a text which is more truly ‘diachronic’ than historical-critical attempts to get ‘behind the text’ in order to establish the ‘original meaning’.11 Locating the discussion in the context of a broad reception-historical survey from the 2nd to the 21st centuries will, it is hoped, illustrate the extent to which recent historical-critical commentators are themselves part of that reception history, developing certain strands within it and neglecting others in the limited choice of questions they pose and the possibilities they are prepared to imagine.12 In other words, what has been forgotten over the past century or so, and why, is as significant as those aspects of the text’s reception which modern commentators have remembered. This study does not make any claim to be exhaustive. Rather, it acknowledges the provisionality of all reception-historical work, bearing in mind Ulrich Luz’s caveat that ‘the history of the influence of biblical texts is infinite; the knowledge of every commentator is finite’, and Markus Bockmuehl’s likening of the history of reception to ‘a vast iceberg of Christian experience which lies very largely submerged beneath the waves of history’.13 Thus the account provided of how the task of locating and categorizing material has been approached will be as important for future scholarship as the provisional evidence collated in this monograph.

OVER VIEW OF T HE BO OK The first chapter of this monograph offers a close reading of the text of Rev. 1:9, in order to tease out the potential offered by what is only superficially a straightforward verse. As my analysis will reveal, the ‘plain sense’ of this apparently clear autobiographical statement (‘I, John, . . . was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus’) is in 10 Bockmuehl 2006: 65. One of the criticisms of the EKK series, at least in terms of its format, is that Wirkungsgeschichte remains secondary to the ‘main task’ of historical criticism. 11 See Rowland 2009: 290–2 for this use of ‘diachronic’ to describe tracing a text’s reception ‘through time’, and the related term ‘synchronic’ for the study of a text at a particular time and place (in contrast to the typical usage in New Testament scholarship, where ‘diachronic’ and ‘synchronic’ describe historical-critical and literary-critical approaches respectively). 12 See Roberts and Rowland 2010: 132; Lyons 2010: 213. 13 Luz 1989: 95; Bockmuehl 1995: 66.

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Patmos in the Reception History of the Apocalypse

fact highly ambiguous, offering interpretative space which diverse readers of Revelation have readily exploited. This scene-setting chapter serves as a springboard for the major receptionhistorical survey which forms the substance of the book. My aim has been to bring together, for the first time in a systematic manner, a wide variety of interpretations of Patmos reflecting different chronological periods, cultural contexts, and interpretative traditions. In order to cast the net as widely as possible, I have not restricted myself to commentaries proper, but instead I explore interpretations of Patmos in a wide range of genres, including hagiographical traditions, liturgy, hymnody, poetry, sermons, and art. This breadth has allowed popular and marginal readings to be examined alongside more mainstream and magisterial interpretations. Chronological, cultural-geographical, and hermeneutical considerations are reflected in the extent and organization of individual chapters, which collectively take the reader on a journey from the 2nd century through to the more familiar historical-critical interpretations which have dominated 20th- and 21st-century scholarship (Chapters 2–6). Chapter 2 begins the story in the foundational early patristic period (2nd– 5th centuries). Given the paucity of Apocalypse commentaries during this period, most of the sources are biographical and hagiographical texts, locating Patmos within the wider story of John, the seer, apostle, and evangelist. However, the interest of some early patristic authors in John’s island sojourn is more than merely historical, given the perceived parallels between John’s situation vis-à-vis a persecuting emperor and their own experience of dislocation and persecution. Chapters 3 and 4 trace the ways in which Western interpretations build upon and develop this patristic foundation, treating material from c.500 (a starting-point justified by the relative explosion of Apocalypse commentaries in the 6th century) through to the eve of the Reformation. There is a major focus in these chapters on Latin Apocalypse commentaries, although liturgical and homiletic traditions are also considered. Interpretations during this period become more complex through a combination of literal, allegorical, and tropological (or moral) levels of meaning. Noteworthy is the increasing prominence given to Patmos as a place set apart, the necessary context for privileged access to the heavenly world (and therefore a place where actual and mythic geography merge). Eastern interpretations from the 5th century onwards (encompassing Greek, Syriac, Armenian, Coptic, and Ethiopic traditions) are treated separately in Chapter 5, in recognition of their unique character. A significant percentage of this chapter is devoted to discussion of the Acts of John by Prochorus, which create a whole narrative world for Patmos, and are particularly memorable for their typological reading which connects John’s experience on the island with that of Moses on Sinai. The chapter concludes with a

Introduction

5

consideration of the foundation of the Patmos monastery by St Christodoulos in 1088, and the consequent importance of Patmos for the Eastern monastic tradition. Chapter 6 continues the Western story through the Reformation and Counter-Reformation period up to the present, concluding with a survey of post1900 commentaries. Unsurprisingly in this modern period, one finds renewed interested in the biography of John (prompted by the Renaissance return ad fontes, especially to the patristic and classical sources), as well as in the geography and topography of the island. Reformation historical-prophetic interpretation of the Apocalypse also opens up correspondences between John’s exile and exile or persecution experienced by early Protestants, while Catholic interpreters continue to exploit the potential of the island as sacred place and monastic ideal. Particular attention is devoted to Martin Luther’s description of his time in the Wartburg as ‘my Patmos’, a surprising designation given his ambivalence towards the Book of Revelation. There is also consideration of poetic apprehension of Patmos, most notably by Hölderlin, but also by a number of British Victorian poets. By comparison, the treatment of Patmos in the post-1900 commentaries with which Chapter 6 concludes is decidedly unimaginative. Given the particular issues associated with what Paolo Berdini calls ‘visual exegesis’,14 the depiction of Patmos in art receives a separate treatment in Chapter 7. This chapter combines a broad discussion of the main strands of visual interpretation of John’s island, across a range of chronological periods, geographical locations, and artistic genres (frescoes, icons, illuminated manuscripts, altarpieces), with more detailed consideration of specific art works. Integral to this chapter is the conviction that visual media may often function as better interpretative keys to the highly visual and symbolic Apocalypse than the verse-by-verse commentary. The concluding chapter engages in more explicit reflection upon what has been achieved in the preceding chapters, urging a more positive attitude to reception-historical ‘cataloguing’ than is often the case. It offers an ‘analogical’ juxtaposition of different interpretations employing similar reading strategies. It also considers the extent to which possibilities raised in Chapter 1 have been explored in Revelation’s reception history, and outlines the wider implications of the findings of this monograph—despite its narrow focus on one verse—for the contemporary interpretation of John’s Book of Revelation, and for New Testament interpretation more broadly. One implication of this reception-historical study is to illuminate the relationship between historical-critical commentators and their own interpretative predecessors. While this relationship is often unacknowledged, the former are heavily dependent on specific strands in the history of reception

14

Berdini 1997.

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Patmos in the Reception History of the Apocalypse

for their questions and conclusions, to the neglect of others. Thus, this present book invites a greater acknowledgement by scholars of the shoulders on which they stand, together with a greater openness to alternative readings of familiar texts, be they unknown, half-forgotten, or familiar but too swiftly rejected. In the second place, this book argues for a greater sensitivity to the multivalency of biblical texts, and the possibility that, on occasion, even the human author (the focus of interest for many historical critics) may deliberately exploit ambiguity. What this means in the case of Revelation is that ‘nonliteral’ readings may not be so readily dismissed as unscientific interpretations of the text, particularly granted its invitations elsewhere to employ alternative reading strategies (e.g. the non-literal interpretation of place names at Rev. 11:8, or the gematrial possibilities of words encouraged by Rev. 13:18). A third characteristic of this book which has wider implications for New Testament scholarship is its plea for a broader vision of the exegetical task. Such a vision would include a reconsideration of the role of the imagination, which is found in rich supply in the earlier (‘pre-critical’) history of reception, but is no less necessary for contemporary historical criticism, especially in its reconstruction of plausible contexts for both authors and original audiences. It would also encourage reader participation rather than a detached historicism, and a broader concept of meaning than the focus on those historical prolegomena which is typical of critical commentaries (discussions of Patmos, for example, are regularly dominated by questions of identity, origins, and geographical location rather than consideration of what Patmos might mean or signify).

DEFINITION OF TERMS As a preface to the book as a whole, the remainder of this introduction will provide a rationale for the approach taken, followed by an explanation of how the task has been executed. This current section therefore offers a definition of key terms, notably the interrelated ‘reception history’, ‘history of interpretation’, and Wirkungsgeschichte, in order to explain and justify the preference for a reception-historical approach. This will be followed by a preliminary sketch of the methodology employed, including an account of how the material was located, selected, and categorized. Reception history, along with the closely related ‘history of interpretation’ and Wirkungsgeschichte (a phrase derived from Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Wahrheit und Methode15 and variously translated ‘history of effects’, ‘history 15

Gadamer 1989 (first German edition 1960).

Introduction

7

of influence’, and ‘effective history’), has become increasingly significant in contemporary biblical studies. In terms of New Testament studies, key figures have included commentators in the Evangelisch-Katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament (EKK), especially Ulrich Luz in his work on Matthew,16 Heikki Räisänen,17 Markus Bockmuehl,18 and the authors of the Blackwell Bible Commentaries (BBC).19 There has also been significant work on various aspects of the reception history of Revelation (though little so far on Patmos specifically). Pioneering work includes the monograph by Arthur Wainwright, the BBC volume by Judith Kovacs and Christopher Rowland, and the recent collection of articles edited by John Lyons and Jorunn
kland.20 Earlier works which engage with ‘pre-critical’ interpretation of Revelation include Wilhelm Bousset’s commentary, R. H. Charles’s somewhat unsympathetic Studies in the Apocalypse, the extensive four-volume history by LeRoy Froom (from a Seventh-Day Adventist perspective), and the monographs by Gerhard Maier and Georg Kretschmar.21 There are also a number of studies focusing on the interpretation of the Apocalypse in specific periods, including the patristic period,22 the Middle Ages,23 the Reformation24 and the English Renaissance,25 or on Revelation’s influence on Christian art (notably Frederick van der Meer and Natasha O’Hear).26 Other scholars have focused on particular commentators,27 or the interpretation of specific passages from Revelation; e.g. Pierre Prigent on Rev. 12 and Seth Turner on Rev. 11:1–13.28 Although the three terms ‘reception history’ (Rezeptionsgeschichte, following the literary critic and pupil of Gadamer, Hans Robert Jauss),29 16 Luz 1989, 1994, 2005: 265–379 and 2006. See also Räisänen 2001: 263–82. For a recent critical consideration of Luz’s contribution in this field, see Elliott 2010. 17 Räisänen 2001. 18 Bockmuehl 1995 and 2006. He places emphasis on the early reception history of the New Testament, as a corrective to later reconstructions of early Christianity or authorial intent. 19 For a discussion of the rationale for the BBC series, see Sawyer 2000. 20 Wainwright 1993; Kovacs and Rowland 2004; Lyons and
kland 2009. Shorter studies on the reception of Revelation include Kyrtatas 1989 and Kovacs 2005. By way of comparison, see the study of Matthew’s account of the walking on the water: Nicholls 2008. 21 Bousset 1896; Charles 1913; Froom 1946–1952; Maier 1981; Kretschmar 1985. 22 Helms 1991. 23 Emmerson and McGinn (eds) 1992. 24 Bauckham 1978; Firth 1979; Backus 2000. 25 Patrides and Wittreich 1984. 26 van der Meer 1978; O’Hear 2011. 27 Bibliographical references will be provided in the appropriate places below, when individual interpreters are discussed. 28 Prigent 1959; Turner 2005. Unlike Turner, Prigent pays little attention to pre-1700 exegesis, and his main focus in the post-1700 period is on historical-critical exegesis of the chapter. See also Boxall 2001 on Rev. 17. 29 Jauss 1982; Parris 2009: 116–47.

8

Patmos in the Reception History of the Apocalypse

Wirkungsgeschichte, and ‘the history of interpretation’ are often used almost interchangeably,30 it is possible to draw theoretical distinctions between them. Before embarking on the reception-historical survey, therefore, some clarification of terminology is called for, together with an explanation of my preference for the term ‘reception history’. By ‘history of interpretation’, following Luz’s distinction between Auslegungsgeschichte and Wirkungsgeschichte, I understand the narrower history of how biblical texts have been interpreted in commentaries and other theological writings and scholarly monographs;31 i.e. a subcategory of wider reception history. The ‘history of interpretation’ includes the exegesis of classic interpreters (in the case of the Apocalypse, figures such as Victorinus, Tyconius, Andreas of Caesarea, Bede, Beatus, Nicholas of Lyra, and Luís de Alcázar). The scope of this study, however, is broader than the ‘history of interpretation’ in this sense, encompassing interpretations in visual art, poetry, liturgy, and hagiography as well as the commentary proper. It does not restrict itself to ‘normative ecclesial-dogmatic tradition’,32 but incorporates diverse, including marginal, and maverick voices. The logical distinction between the remaining two terms, as I use them here, is more one of focus than of content. Wirkungsgeschichte (particularly when translated as ‘history of effects’) can be understood as prioritizing the effects or consequences (both good and bad) of particular readings of the biblical text, i.e. the text as ‘effective agent’,33 while reception history is arguably more interested in the interpreters themselves and how they receive the text in diverse contexts. In practice, however, it is not always easy to differentiate the two. The distinction between them is not as sharp as that posited by Heikki Räisänen: namely, the contrast between ‘the actual “effectiveness” of a text and such “reception” as does not let it be effective’.34 Räisänen’s distinction arguably underestimates the dynamic interplay between text and reader, effect and use. Attention to reception history in no way excludes receptions of the biblical text in which the text itself can be shown to have had an effect on those receiving it. Rather, although not ignoring how readings of the text have influenced human lives and communities, nor indeed the theological claims for the text a more wirkungsgeschichtliche approach might

30 ‘Reception history, history of interpretation, call it what you will, is a subject whose time has come’: Roberts and Rowland 2010: 132. 31 Luz 1989: 95; 2002: 107; see also Räisänen 2001. 32 Räisänen 2001: 266. In practice, different Christian communities have their own normative traditions, and therefore may recount the history of interpretation rather differently. 33 Rowland 2008:11. 34 Räisänen 2001: 269.

Introduction

9

prioritize,35 my preference for the term ‘reception history’ reflects the main thrust of the exploration on the range of readers/interpreters and what they have taken the text to mean. There is, however, a second way of understanding the distinction. In arguing for ‘effective history’ as the more appropriate English translation of Gadamer’s term Wirkungsgeschichte, Ulrich Luz emphasizes the extent to which the interpreter, far from being a detached observer of the history he or she studies, is part of that history: History is ‘effective’, because we owe to it almost everything we are: our culture, our language, our questions and our worldviews.36

Wirkungsgeschichte is thus an important tool for enabling reading communities and individuals to relearn where they have come from. Luz sees this as the appropriate goal of reception history. Although emphasizing the ‘reception’/‘receiver’ aspect of the process, therefore, I will attempt to keep in mind the question of the interpreter’s relationship to history.37

METHOD The term ‘history’ within the phrase ‘reception history’ implies some kind of analytical process: the need to make decisions both about the material to include, and how to organize this selected material into an interpretative narrative.38 Prior even to this are strategies for identifying where such material might be located. What follows is a brief account of the method employed in the research for and the writing of this book, which will hopefully be of assistance to those engaged in reception-historical study in the future. In line with the definition of ‘reception history’ given above, the focus of this book has been as wide-ranging as possible. There is a small body of Patmos scholarship, mainly in articles, which has provided initial encouragement that closer attention to the history and significance of John’s island would be a fruitful exercise. An important 1975 article by H. D. Saffrey flags up the historical, cultural, and mythological potential of attention to Patmos within the classical world, notably its close connections with Miletus, and its associations with the cult of Artemis (for the ‘pre-Johannine reception’ of Patmos, 35 For the proposal that a preference for reception history over Wirkungsgeschichte reflects the increasing secularization of biblical studies, see Morgan 2010: 175–6. 36 Luz 2006: 125. 37 Nicholls 2005: 6; Roberts 2011: 1–2. 38 ‘The term “history” implies a focus on what has already happened and evokes the sense of an ordered and descriptive account’: Nicholls 2005: 4.

10

Patmos in the Reception History of the Apocalypse

see Appendix 2).39 Friedrich Wilhelm Horn’s essay in the Festschrift for Otto Böcher offers an in-depth analysis of Rev. 1:9 and its ambiguity about the reasons for John’s presence on Patmos, with particular consideration of early patristic evidence.40 Finally, Eve-Marie Becker’s recent article overlaps significantly with the interests of my own work in exploring the potential of both a ‘history of interpretation’ (auslegungsgeschichtlich) and a broader ‘cultural-historical’ (kulturgeschichtlich) approach to understanding Patmos.41 She considers the potential for viewing Patmos as locus visionis as well as place of exile, a possibility highlighted by the foundation of the monastery by Christodoulos in the 11th century, discusses some depictions of Patmos in Christian art, and examines the cultural impact of the island for figures as diverse as Luther, Herder, and Hölderlin. Broader work already done on the history of interpretation and reception of the Apocalypse (notably the studies already mentioned in this introduction) have also served as useful starting-points, as have standard bibliographical resources on biblical interpretation in particular historical periods, such as (for the patristic age) Biblia Patristica, and collections of texts such as Migne. These resources have suggested key interpreters and influential commentaries and other writings to be followed up. Particular mention should be made of works which have been regularly mined in the research for this monograph. Seth Turner’s doctoral thesis has been an excellent guide to key patristic and medieval commentaries, while the BBC commentary by Judith Kovacs and Christopher Rowland has been equally invaluable in ensuring that later centuries are also covered.42 In the case of commentaries, discussions of Patmos have been relatively easy to locate, given that these generally (although not always) occur in comments on Rev. 1:9. Since Patmos functions as a location in the wider biography of John, apocryphal lives and other hagiographical texts have also been examined. Although not exhaustive, Alan Culpepper’s study John the Son of Zebedee has therefore been an important resource, particularly for identifying more obscure traditions and interpreters from the patristic and early medieval periods.43 Nevertheless, given the much broader interest of this monograph, incorporating visual as well as verbal interpretations, and the reception of Patmos in liturgical contexts and wider culture, much of the material has been stumbled across by chance, or through searches in library catalogues or online resources

39 40 41 42 43

Saffrey 1975. Horn 2005. Becker 2008. Turner 2005; Kovacs and Rowland 2004; for the patristic period, see also Gumerlock 2003. Culpepper 2000.

Introduction

11

such as Googlebooks, with the inevitable risk that potentially relevant material may have been missed. However, I hope the benefits of this wide focus will be amply demonstrated throughout this book, even if the material assembled here constitutes only the tiny tip of a very large iceberg. The resulting body of accumulated material is understandably large. Inevitably, some decisions have had to be taken about what to include in this study. For the earlier patristic period (Chapter 2), when patterns were being laid which became foundations for later interpreters, and where the surviving commentary evidence is minimal, all material has been included. For later periods, where extant interpreters are more numerous and interpretations more repetitive, some selectivity has been necessary and the presentation is therefore illustrative rather than exhaustive. The priority here has been to include examples of each type of interpretation, though avoiding undue repetition, and often majoring on treatments of Patmos which are especially interesting or innovative. To ensure breadth, interpretations from a range of Christian traditions have been selected, including texts which reflect popular (e.g. the Prochorus Acts from the East, or the Travels of Sir John Mandeville from the West) and even marginal viewpoints. The principles for organizing the selected material have been primarily chronological and geographical, and secondarily what might be called ‘genealogical’. In other words, my starting-point (paralleling the strategy of historical-critical approaches) has been to attend to the date, geographical location, and cultural context of specific interpretations of Patmos. This might be called, following Rowland’s definition, a synchronic approach. Sometimes this is tackled relatively briefly, although closer attention is paid to contextual issues when particularly surprising or innovative readings occur. As noted above, the distinctive characteristics of what Paolo Berdini calls ‘visual exegesis’44 justify treating the reception of Patmos in visual art separately from the main discussion (Chapter 7), although employing a similar methodology for organizing the artistic material. A second-stage concern in the chronological organization has been to categorize the material according to different genres and types of interpretation within the same broad chronological period. One reason for this is to highlight probable ‘genealogical’ relationships between interpreters who offer similar interpretations of Patmos (a more diachronic approach), identifying possible antecedents for a given reading, and also clarifying significant innovations where they occur. Sometimes, later authors are explicit about their dependence upon earlier generations (Victorinus, Tyconius, and Primasius are commentators regularly cited by successors). In many cases, however, the links are more tentative, and genealogical descriptions therefore remain

44

Berdini 1997.

12

Patmos in the Reception History of the Apocalypse

provisional, pending further discoveries from that major part of the iceberg currently below the water. This chronological and genealogical framework orders the material in the bulk of this study. But there is a further analogical process which may be usefully undertaken. This involves juxtaposing similar types of reception from diverse chronological and cultural contexts in order to identify common interpretative strategies across different centuries and cultural contexts. Although present in the unfolding analysis (Chapters 2–7), this will receive particular attention in the final chapter, which will reflect more systematically on what has been achieved, and its implications for contemporary study of the Apocalypse. My analysis of different types of interpretation is particularly indebted to the categorization proposed by Judith Kovacs and Christopher Rowland in their BBC volume on Revelation. Kovacs and Rowland distinguish not simply (as do standard histories of interpretation of the Apocalypse) between interpretations—such as preterist, church-historical, world-historical, and futurist—which focus on past, present and future (‘idealist’ interpretations falling outside this chronological framework). While their interpretative grid does acknowledge this temporal axis, it regards it as insufficient for appropriately categorizing interpretations of Revelation. Their key distinction is between allegorical or ‘decoding’ approaches, and those which use Revelation as a heuristic lens through which interpreters view their own time and circumstances (for which they use the term ‘actualization’).45 The decoding strategy, as defined by Kovacs and Rowland, is often characterized by close attention to detail, translating the text into another medium by one-to-one correspondence in order to detect ‘what it really means’. Such a definition highlights the similarities between the future eschatological interpretation encouraged by the Scofield Reference Bible and attention to first century imperial politics typical of historical-critical interpretations: both are essentially forms of decoding. ‘Actualization’ is closer to ‘analogy’, in that it generally regards the text as multivalent. Kovacs and Rowland identify two forms. The first type juxtaposes the Apocalypse, as a kind of lens, with the interpreter’s own situation. The second is a more visionary kind of re-appropriation (as in the visions of Hildegard of Bingen), whereby the Apocalypse serves as the springboard for visionary experience similar to John’s on the part of the interpreter.

45 Kovacs and Rowland 2004: 7–11. Actualization is defined as ‘reading the Apocalypse in relation to new circumstances, seeking to convey the spirit of the text rather than being preoccupied with the plethora of detail’ (Kovacs and Rowland 2004: 8). It is borrowed from the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s 1993 document The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, where it is used more broadly to describe attempts to ‘discover what the text has to say to the present time’, which might include the use of allegory: Houlden (ed.) 1995: 82–6.

Introduction

13

The Kovacs-Rowland grid is particularly useful in that it enables chronological emphasis (past, present, or future) to be plotted alongside an interpreter’s location on the decoding/actualization axis. Nevertheless, my chronological survey will also attempt to integrate more ‘emic’ terminology appropriate to particular time periods, whether the use of allegory and the language of  , and figura in the patristic period, or the fourfold senses of Scripture typical of the Middle Ages.46 A final word of explanation is called for regarding primary source material in ancient languages. For reasons of brevity and accessibility, I have either used published English translations of Greek or Latin texts, or provided my own. Where the original languages are crucial to the argument, I have retained the relevant phrases along with the English translation, or as part of an interpretative gloss. In the case of other ancient languages with which I am unfamiliar (e.g. Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, and Arabic), I have of necessity relied upon extant English translations.

46 On parallels between the medieval four senses of scripture and modern literary and readeroriented approaches, see Gibbs 2009: 378–9.

1 ‘I was on the Island Called Patmos’: Re-reading Rev. 1:9 INTRODUCTION This opening chapter is devoted to a close reading of the verse containing John’s solitary reference to Patmos (Rev. 1:9), phrase by phrase, in advance of a systematic exploration of its treatment in the Apocalypse’s reception history. The purpose of this section is not to replace one kind of foundationalism (authorial intention) with another (philology) on which the reception history is then built as a superstructure. Rather, it seeks to describe the imaginative space offered to interpreters by the ambiguities and multivalency of the text, which might have been obscured by scholarly focus on a narrow set of questions and interests. These ambiguities relate to both the Greek original,1 with its idiosyncratic grammar and syntax,2 and the Vulgate translation which largely informed its reception history in the Latin West.3 One caveat needs to be expressed at the outset. The close reading of the text which now follows cannot fail to have been influenced, consciously or otherwise, by my own reception-historical research undertaken prior to the writing of this chapter, reflecting to a significant degree the new possibilities such a survey has opened up. In other words, it is as much retrospective (reflecting knowledge of readings already uncovered) as prospective (setting out possible ambiguities yet to be explored).


¯ªg
øÅ . . . KªÅ From a form-critical perspective, John’s self-description in the wider passage Rev. 1:9–20 offers a broader interpretative context for the reference to Patmos. 1

Text in Aland et al. 1983: 883. The Greek manuscript tradition of this verse is fairly stable. Charles 1920: cxvii–clix. 3 There are no substantial differences between the ancient African text, represented by Cyprian, and the Vulgate. 2

‘I was on the Island Called Patmos’: Re-reading Rev. 1:9

15

Table 1.1. Visions of Exiled Prophets

‘I was . . . ’ Seer’s name Place of exile Day of vision Seeing/hearing Word of God/Lord Spirit

Rev. 1:9–11

Ezek. 1:1–4

Dan. 10:2–5

1:9
¯ ªg
øÅ . . . KªÅ 1:9 1:9 Patmos, surrounded by water 1:10 1:10 (hear) 1:11 (see) 1:9 e ºª  F Ł ı 1:10

1:1 LXX Kªø XÅ K  fiø . . . 1:3 1:3 River Chebar

10:2 LXX Kªø ˜ÆØź XÅ ŁH 10:2 10:4 River Tigris

1:1, 2 1:1–4 (see) 1:24 (hear) 1:3 LXX ºª  Œıæ ı 1:4 (LXX FÆ); cf. 1:20–21; 2:2

10:4 10:5 (see) 10:9 (hear)

Although there is debate over whether to classify Rev. 1:9–20 as a ‘prophetic call narrative’,4 its formal characteristics certainly invite comparison with Old Testament visionary reports: Daniel’s vision by the river Tigris (Dan. 10), and Ezekiel’s vision of the Merkabah (Ezek. 1).5 In all three, heavenly beings appear to a prophet-visionary at a specified terrestrial location, which becomes a sacred place enabling access to the heavenly realm (for John as a prophet, see Rev. 1:3; 10:8–11; 22:9). If Rev. 1:9 is understood as alluding to exile (whether enforced or self-imposed), then all three share the motif of privileged vision being accorded to the exiled prophet. Table 1.1 lists some of the formal correspondences between the three accounts.6 In each of these visionary passages, the location is invested with profound significance as a consequence of the divine revelation which occurs there.7 Walter Brueggemann uses the phrase ‘storied place’: ‘that is a place which has meaning because of the history lodged there’.8 Nor is this phenomenon restricted to the canonical writings. Enoch records (like John, Ezekiel, and Daniel, using the first person singular), how he was sitting by the waters of Dan when visions fell upon him (1 En. 13:7). According to 2 Enoch, Enoch was transported to heaven from his own home, where he was weeping and sorrowing (2 En. 1:2). Abraham heard the divine voice and encountered the angel Iloil or Jaol outside the house of his father Terah (Apoc. 4 Aune 1997: 70–3. Aune concludes that Rev.1:9–20 is closest to the symbolic vision. For the literary aspects of John’s self-presentation, see Bovon 2000. 5 On the use of Daniel in Revelation, see Beale 1984; on Ezekiel, see Vanhoye 1962; Goulder 1981; Vogelgesang 1981; Ruiz 1989; Boxall 2007; also Moyise 1995. 6 Table adapted from Boxall 2007: 157. Used with permission. 7 Other biblical passages describe epiphanies and commissionings on holy ground or in cultic settings: Gen 28:10–22; Exod. 3–4; Isa. 6; Luke 1:5–23; Nickelsburg 2001: 234. 8 Brueggemann 1978: 187.

16

Patmos in the Reception History of the Apocalypse

Ab. 8–10), before embarking on his journey to Horeb. Ezra encountered the angel Uriel while lying on his bed, lamenting over the desolation of Zion (4 Ezra 3:1; 4:1). In the Ascension of Isaiah, Isaiah was granted a ‘door into an unknown world’9 and his spirit was caught up to heaven while seated on the king’s couch in the palace of Hezekiah in Jerusalem (Asc. Isa. 6:10–12). All these parallels suggest that the interpretation of Patmos might be fruitfully informed by attention to John’s visionary predecessors and prominent places in their visionary stories. In particular, if Rev. 1:9 is read through the standard paradigm of exile/banishment, Daniel’s and Ezekiel’s Babylonian context provides a distinctive lens through which to view John’s own ‘exile’ in Babylon, and Patmos comes to share significance with the Tigris and Chebar as place of revelation, albeit a location far from the holy city where one would expect to encounter the glory of God.10 In short, closer attention to the form of the text invites greater reflection on the significance of place.

K B fi  fiø… By contrast to Ezekiel and Daniel, John’s place of revelation is an ‘island’ (B , Rev. 1:9). This word provides further rich potential for interpreters of the Apocalypse. As Tamara Kohn reminds us: ‘Islands provide settings from which one can witness or partake in all sorts of splendid journeys. They are places to take off from and come home to with new riches.’11 Similarly, David Barr describes islands as ‘transitional places’, participating in land and sea but belonging fully to neither, and thus making possible a journey from ‘ordinary reality’ to ‘transhistorical reality’.12 Again, however, the interests of modern critical commentators are decidedly narrow. They often focus on the isolated character of Patmos, its ‘rocky’, barren landscape, or its physical distance from the seven churches. Some explore the possibility that its geography and topography have played a role in shaping John’s visionary geography.13 All these are possible and relevant. But attention might also be fruitfully paid to the significance of islands in the biblical tradition which informs and inspires both John and his interpreters, as well as possibilities in the classical world, and the wider cultural associations of islands expressed by Kohn. 9

Sparks 1984: 795. Corsini explicitly connects the ‘isolation and separation’ of Patmos with Ezekiel and Daniel: Corsini 1983: 84. 11 Kohn 2002: 39. 12 Barr 1998: 62. 13 Swete 1909: 12, 93, 160–1; Mounce 1977: 75; outside the commentary genre, Stanley 1863: 268–70; Bent 1888; Hemer 1986: 29–30 (though see Geil 1897: 65). 10

‘I was on the Island Called Patmos’: Re-reading Rev. 1:9

17

Patmos is not known in the Bible except for this one reference in the Apocalypse. Individual islands are mentioned exceedingly rarely in the New Testament. Outside Revelation (cf. Rev. 6:14 and 16:20), the singular B  is only found in Acts, referring to Cyprus (Acts 13:6) and Melitē/Malta (Acts 28:1, 7, 9, 11; cf. 27:26).14 Other Aegean islands are mentioned in passing (e.g. Samothrace: Acts 16:11; Cos and Rhodes: Acts 21:1). All other biblical uses of B  are in the Old Testament. The Septuagint uses the plural form most often to translate the Hebrew ‫איִּים‬, ‘coastlands’ (e.g. Isa. 42:12; 44:1; 49:1, 22), a pattern largely followed by the Vulgate in its use of insula. Typical is Ps. 97:1: The LORD is king! Let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad!

The LXX translation (LXX Ps 96:1) reads ‘coastlands’ as ‘islands’ (B Ø), paralleling ‘the earth’ of the first half of the verse. At Isa. 20:6, ‘the inhabitants of this coastland’ become in the LXX ‘those dwelling in the island’ ( ƒ ŒÆ ØŒ F  K B fi  fiø; cf. Isa. 23:2, addressing the merchants of Sidon). In the LXX version of Gen. 10, describing the territories of the descendants of Noah, ‘the coastlands of the goyim’ (‫ƒ ’י ם‬ ‫ו‬G‫ ) ’א ’’ײׁ ַה‬is translated ‘the islands of the nations’ (B Ø H KŁH, LXX Gen. 10:5; cf. 10:32; Zeph. 2:11; 1 Macc. 11:38). In Jubilees, building on the Table of Nations in Gen. 10, the cold portion of the earth given to Noah’s son Japheth, beyond the river Tina, includes ‘five large islands’ (Jub. 8:29).15 Occasionally, the ‘coastlands’/‘islands’ are named, or given an approximate location: Tubal and Javan (i.e. Greece),16 along with ‘the distant islands that have neither heard my fame nor seen my glory’ (Isa. 66:19); ‘the coasts of Cyprus [LXX N   ı X ØØ]’ (Jer. 2:10; Ezek. 27:6); ‘the kings of Tarshish and of the isles’ (Ps. 72:10). In Ezek. 26–27, the islands are close enough to Tyre to witness its fall, which suggests a Mediterranean location. At Ezek. 39:6 they are mentioned in close proximity to Magog. In other passages, they are described as ‘the islands of the sea[s]’ (e.g. Isa. 24:15 LXX; 1 Macc. 6:29; 14:5; 15:1). The singular form may well point to the Great Sea, the Mediterranean. According to Lupieri, to a Middle-Eastern Jew ‘the islands’ would refer to the western parts of the Mediterranean: ‘all the lands to the west, beginning with Crete and Cyprus, which we would call islands, from the small marine rocks of the Aegean to Sicily, and to the lands over the sea to the West—Greece, Italy, and Spain’.17

14

The island of Clauda is called a Å  at Acts 27:16. See e.g. Scott 2002: 23–43. 16 Scott 1995: 13. Gen. 10:5 identifies the ‘peoples of the islands’ as among the sons of Javan, elsewhere identified with ‘Ionia and all Greeks’: Josephus, Ant. 1.124; Dan. 8:21; 10:20; 11:2. 17 Lupieri 2006: 29. 15

18

Patmos in the Reception History of the Apocalypse

In short, the Old Testament fairly consistently associates the ‘islands’ with the ‘nations’. They are places geographically distant from the land of Israel, and populated by non-Israelites. As in Isa. 66, they are sometimes mentioned in the context of the eschatological conversion of the Gentiles. John’s vision on an island to the west would therefore shift the locus of divine revelation to pagan territory, far away even from the exiled Jewish communities of Ezekiel and Daniel. If Lupieri is correct, then biblical prophecies concerning the islands would have been understood as encompassing that part of the known world where Patmos and other Mediterranean islands were located.18 If for the biblical mindset the islands were the distant isles of the nations, they had a more central location in the classical universe. This was particularly the case with the islands of the Aegean, described by Aelius Aristeides as in the very middle of the oikoumene (Aelius Aristeides 44.3–4).19 Moreover, as Christy Constantakopoulou has shown in her study of ‘insularity’ (what it means to be an island) in the ancient Aegean world, individual islands could manifest both isolation and connectivity (on a continuum between these two poles): In other words, islands were understood as distinct ‘closed’ worlds, ideal locations for the extraordinary and the bizarre, but at the same time they were also perceived as parts of a complex reality of interaction in the Aegean sea.20

Both characteristics—isolation and integration—are appropriate to a consideration of Patmos. Connectivity is particularly established through its strong links with Miletus, and via that city to other surrounding islands.21 The description of islands in groups (e.g. the Sporades) would also have contributed to integration. The extent of Patmos’s isolation varies according to the emphasis placed on the Miletus connection, and the weight given to traditions about the island as place of banishment. There is one further association of islands, highlighted in ancient archaeological and inscriptional evidence from the Aegean, which also invites fruitful consideration: that of the sacred island. Delos, west of Patmos in the Cyclades, is famously remembered as the birthplace of Apollo. More significantly, 18 A similar interpretation of the islands, including the Aegean islands, as ‘the Isles of the Gentiles’ is made in 1677 by Archbishop Joseph Georgirenes of Samos: Georgirenes 1677, epistle to the reader. 19 Constantakopoulou 2007: 1. 20 Constantakopoulou 2007: 2. She notes (2007: 13–15) that the ancient Greeks used the term ‘island’ predominantly for the small island, often distinguished from the larger landmasses such as Crete, Sicily, and Rhodes. On islands in general, see Kohn 2002. 21 Constantakopoulou notes a fragmentary inscription from Aptera, interpreted as referring to the ‘polis and the land and the islands’ of Miletus: Constantakopoulou 2007: 229, citing Robert 1940. Besides Patmos, Leros, and Lipsi, she suggests that the Milesian islands included the Argiae, Tragia (Agathonisi), Pharmacousa, and Lade in the Milesian gulf.

‘I was on the Island Called Patmos’: Re-reading Rev. 1:9

19

Patmos itself was associated in the Roman period with Apollo’s sister Artemis, as B  IªÆı  Å ¸Å ø , ‘the most illustrious island of the daughter of Leto’ (see Appendix 2). This rich heritage, together with wider attention to the significance of islands and the concept of insularity, is surely fundamental to any rounded scholarly treatment of the meaning of Patmos.

. . . B fi ŒÆº ı fiÅ — fiø It is the natural assumption of critical commentators that John’s reference to Patmos be understood literally. No other serious candidate presents itself besides the small island in the Sporades, now one of the Dodecanese, approximately thirty miles off the Turkish coast, also known in the early modern period as Patino (by which it was known by Westerners until relatively recently) and Palmosa (a surprising and suggestive designation, as the island ‘abounding in palm trees’). The origin of the name Patmos remains uncertain: one tradition claims that it is derived from the ‘step’ or Æ Æ of the god Poseidon (Neptune); another links it to a Syriac word meaning ‘terebinth’.22 This identification with the Aegean island largely remains the case, even allowing for variations in the name found in Apocalypse manuscripts and commentaries. In Greek, one occasionally finds  ø (Vat. Gr. 1190);23 Pathmos is the most common variant in Latin versions and commentaries, both those following the Vulgate and those which use Old Latin versions; other variants found include Phatmos, Pathamus, Pammos, Patmum, and Patmon.24 One rare but interesting reading in the reception history, which will be discussed at the appropriate point (the section on Victorinus of Pettau in Chapter 2), is Partha.25 However, there is little indication that this reading provoked a rival location to Patmos in the eastern Aegean.26 Hence it is unsurprising to find modern scholars consulting classical texts to clarify the geographical location and character of Patmos (see Appendix 2). Thucydides refers to Patmos in a description of a naval battle in 428–427 bce (Pel. War 3.33:3);27 Strabo locates the island close to Leros and the Corassiae (Geog. 10.5.13), while Pliny the Elder gives the circumference of the island 22

Guérin 1856: 2–4. Hoskier 1929: I, 524. In a 5th century bce inscription, the island is called Patnos. 24 Gryson 2000–2003: 124–7. 25 D (Trinity College Dublin) has ‘vocatur Paphmos/Partha per verbum domini et testimonium in . . . ‘: Gryson 2000–2003: 126–7. 26 There is one exception to the Aegean location: a tradition found in some Eastern traditions, which identifies Patmos as an island of Antioch, thereby implicitly locating it in the eastern Mediterranean. This will be discussed at the appropriate place in Chapter 5. 27 An alternative interpretation is offered by e.g. Gomme, who reads — oı as an ancient correction for ¸ oı (Latmos, a mountain in Caria): Gomme 1956: II, 295. Guérin rightly rejects this reading, on that grounds that Latmos is not an island: Guérin 1856: 2. 23

20

Patmos in the Reception History of the Apocalypse

during his description of the islands of the Sporades (N.H. 4.12.69). Finally, the Stadiasmus Maris Magni, probably from c.200 ce and therefore later than Revelation, gives 200 stadia as the distance between the Parthenion of Leros and the Amazonion of Patmos.28 However, the text of Revelation offers other possibilities. First, as Martha Himmelfarb has reminded us, Jewish visionary texts ‘make no distinction between mythic geography and real’.29 Enoch’s tour in the Book of the Watchers (1 En. 17–19; 20–36), taking in Jerusalem, paradise, and the ends of the earth, is a case in point where the blending of the two makes them difficult to separate. Such Jewish apocalypses represent the immediate interpretative context for the author of John’s Apocalypse and its first audiences. This raises the question: at what point does real geography give way to mythic in John’s visionary book? Where does Patmos stand within this trajectory? Indeed, might not an individual location contain both ‘real’ and ‘mythic’ elements in the same visionary text? These are questions worth posing, given that Patmos arguably becomes the locus for John’s vision of the new Jerusalem, which he, like Ezekiel, viewed from a very high mountain: Rev. 21:10; Ezek. 40:2. Second, there is a well-established exegetical tradition, shared by ancient and modern commentators, of reading other place names in Revelation figuratively. As John Sweet notes in his commentary: The geography likely is symbolical . . . Like Guernica and Hiroshima for us, Sodom, Egypt, Babylon and Jerusalem were heavy with meaning.30

The author of Revelation is explicit about the non-literal interpretation of the ‘great city’: it is called ıÆ ØŒH Sodom and Egypt, ‘where also their Lord was crucified’ (Rev. 11:8). —ıÆ ØŒH (Vulgate spiritaliter) is variously translated in English translations ‘spiritually’ (AV), ‘figuratively’ (NIV), ‘mystically’ (NAS), ‘allegorically’ (RSV), ‘prophetically’ (NRSV), and ‘known by the symbolic names’ (NJB). Indeed, there are even closer parallels between this verse and the statement about Patmos at Rev. 1:9 which might suggest to a commentator a common pattern of interpretation (namely the shared use of the verb ŒÆºE): Their corpses will be on the street of the great city, which is spiritually called ‘Sodom’ and ‘Egypt’, where their Lord was also crucified. ŒÆd e  HÆ ÆP H Kd B ºÆ Æ B ºø B ªºÅ, ltir jakeEtai ıÆ ØŒH  Æ ŒÆd `Yªı , ‹ ı ŒÆd › ŒæØ  ÆP H K ÆıæŁÅ (Rev. 11:8). 28 Stadiasmus Maris Magni 283: Müller (ed.) 1855, I: 499. On her map of Patmos, Johanna Schmidt locates the Amazonion on the north-western tip of the island: Schmidt 1949: 2177. 29 Himmelfarb 1991: 63. 30 Sweet 1979: 15.

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I . . . was on the island which is called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. . . . KªÅ K B fi  fiø tfi B jakoul mfi g — fiø Øa e ºª  F Ł F ŒÆd c Ææ ıæÆ
Å F (Rev. 1:9).

The passive voice of both the indicative at 11:8 and the participle at 1:9 might legitimately be interpreted as a divine passive: it is God who ‘calls’ the island ‘Patmos’, further legitimating the quest for a non-geographical interpretation.31 Given the lead provided by the ıÆ ØŒH of Rev. 11:8, and further textual hints,32 other place names in Revelation are generally interpreted in a similar manner, notably Babylon (Rev. 17). The interpretation of Babylon usually involves one of two strategies. The first is to treat ‘Babylon’ allegorically, as a code for another real city (normally Rome, although occasionally 1st-century Jerusalem).33 The second approach might be called analogical, interpreting ‘Babylon’ as a symbol for the archetypal idolatrous and oppressive city/empire/politicoreligious system, wherever that may be found.34 Equally, the ‘new Jerusalem’ is not the earthly Jerusalem, although it has continuity with and resemblance to the latter. To varying degrees, critical commentators will apply similar figurative or analogical strategies to other geographical locations in the Apocalypse: e.g. ‘the wilderness’ (Rev. 12:6); Mount Zion (Rev. 14:1); the River Euphrates (Rev. 16:12); Armageddon (Rev. 16:16); Gog and Magog (Rev. 20:8).35 Despite this clear hermeneutical precedent, however, the regular strategy for commentators in the cases of Patmos, the cities of the seven churches, and the territory of Asia itself, is to interpret them literally. There is little or no attempt to offer explicit justification for such a hermeneutical move. In the case of the seven churches, this may be contrasted with a common strategy in medieval Apocalypse commentaries, where the names of the seven cities have symbolic meaning, although whether this presupposes an etymological explanation is not always clear.36 This contrast is all the more surprising given the widespread acceptance among many critical commentators of the view (already found in the earliest extant Latin commentator Victorinus) that the sevenfold character of the Asian churches has symbolic significance.37 In the light of the

31 Other divine passives in the Apocalypse include the repeated ŁÅ at Rev. 6:2, 4, 8, 11, the references to heaven or heavenly realities being ‘opened’ (Rev. 11:19; 15:5; 19:11), and the ‘snatching up’ of the male child (æŁÅ) to God’s throne at Rev. 12:5. 32 E.g. the explanation of the beast’s seven heads as seven mountains/kings (Rev. 17:9–10). 33 On the latter, see e.g. Ford 1975; Barker 2000. 34 E.g. Rowland 1998: 685–6. 35 At Ezek. 38:2, Gog refers to an individual and Magog the land from which he comes; here Gog and Magog seem to be both rebellious nations and the territory of those nations. 36 See e.g. Apringius’s 6th-century commentary: Gryson 2003: 41. 37 E.g. Caird 1966: 15.

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wider hermeneutical strategy suggested by the text as a whole, one might expect similar possibilities to be explored in the case of Patmos. There is a second hermeneutical possibility suggested by the text, albeit associated with names of persons rather than places: the practice of gematria. Rev. 13:17–18 invites the reader or audience to calculate the number of the beast’s name. The reception history of that passage is littered with rival attempts to identity that name and its meaning, not only using the Greek and Hebrew alphabets, but also exploiting the potential of Latin names.38 This is certainly an avenue worth considering in the case of the name ‘Patmos’, and the variant readings found in both Greek and Latin manuscripts. Given that names in the Apocalypse, whether of persons or places, often have more than literal significance, attention to possible symbolic meanings of Patmos is a justifiable scholarly exercise.

Øa e ºª  F Ł F ŒÆd c Ææ ıæÆ
Å F Eugene Boring is typical of many modern commentators in expressing the ‘consensus view’ that John was exiled to Patmos: The grammar prohibits our understanding this phrase to mean that John had gone to Patmos for missionary preaching or in order to seek solitude to prepare for prophetic visions. The phrase ‘on account of ’ is always used in Revelation for the result of an action, not its purpose. John has been banished to Patmos because he had been preaching the Christian message.39

Yet (pace Boring) the Greek Ø with the accusative and the Latin propter retain an inherent ambiguity, irrespective of the use of the preposition elsewhere in Revelation. Such ambiguity calls for consideration before final conclusions are drawn.40 On the one hand, there is a significant minority of scholars prepared to entertain the possibility that the preposition at Rev. 1:9 might indeed express purpose. It could be taken to mean that John goes to Patmos in order to preach the word of God, treating the island as prime missionary territory.41

38

Brady 1983; Kovacs and Rowland 2004: 157–8. Boring 1989: 82. 40 Those who consider other possibilities include Ratton 1912: 131; Beckwith 1919: 204–5, 434; Loisy 1923: 75–7; Corsini 1983: 83–4; Aune 1997: 81–2; Barr 1998: 38–9; Rowland 1998: 565, 569; Knight 1999: 21, 38; Barker 2000: xii, 57, 79; Farmer 2005: 38; Boxall 2006: 10–11, 39; Resseguie 2009: 71–2. 41 E.g. Farrer 1964: 64 (though Farrer ultimately opts for the exile theory); Corsini 1983: 83–4; Trudinger 1988: 365: 289; Farmer 2005: 38. 39

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Alternatively, John voluntarily retreats to Patmos as part of his regular prophetic activity,42 in order to receive prophetic inspiration or apocalyptic vision,43 or to edit previously received visions for publication.44 Margaret Barker, for example, makes the intriguing proposal that John came to Patmos on escaping from Jerusalem, where earlier visions and prophecies had caused trouble for him; Patmos would then have provided the context for producing the final form of the text, perhaps under inspiration.45 That the text invites these possibilities is underscored by the earlier use of the phrase ‘the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ’ ( e ºª  F Ł F ŒÆd c Ææ ıæÆ
Å F æØ F) at Rev. 1:2, where it refers not to John’s preaching of the gospel, but to what John saw (‹Æ r ); i.e. the Apocalypse itself. On the other hand, if we accept the weight of the argument that John’s typical use of Ø is determinative, a certain ambiguity remains. The claim that Rev. 1:9 must refer to exile as a consequence of preaching activity itself rests on a paraphrase: ‘I, John, . . . was on the island called Patmos as a result of preaching the word of God.’ It often also depends on interpreting ŁºEłØ as Roman persecution, rather than general hardships, or the expected ‘tribulation’ of the last days (e.g. Mark 13:19; Rom. 8:35). Alternative explanations are possible, however: John was prompted as a result of hearing God’s word to go to Patmos; i.e. God rather than any Roman official directed him there. In a text which so strongly emphasizes divine agency, this might suggest itself as a more compelling interpretation. An alternative might be that John went to Patmos as a result of studying God’s word and the testimony borne by Jesus, which prompted him to seek out one of the ‘islands of the nations’. Or the phrase might mean that John chose Patmos in an act of voluntary flight or self-imposed exile, to escape possible arrest or persecution resulting from his missionary activity in Asia. Michael Volonakis considers this latter possibility: ‘that his associates at Ephesos may have advised him to leave that city and take shelter in the island, remote from the danger which threatened him as the most prominent teacher of Christianity during the persecutions of the Christians’.46 In short, this one phrase contains rich potential for the developing biography of John.47 Indeed, as David Barr notes in his narrative-critical reading of the book, how the reader chooses to construe the allusive reason for John’s location has a major bearing on how the unfolding story is read.48 Historical 42

E.g. Knight 1999: 20–1, 38. Schüssler Fiorenza 1991: 50. 44 Barr 1998: 39. 45 Barker 2000: 57. This is one plank in Barker’s distinctive interpretation of Revelation as a whole, which places more emphasis on Jerusalem than on Patmos. 46 Volonakis 1922: 352. 47 On the development of the John legend, see Culpepper 2000; Hamburger 2002. 48 Barr 1998: 39. 43

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critics might even consider the possibility that the ‘intended’ meaning encompasses more than one of these multiple possibilities: the author might have chosen such an ambiguous phrase deliberately.

KªÅ K Æ Ø K B fi ŒıæØÆŒB fi  æÆfi One final element in John’s inaugural vision is the association made between Patmos and the Temple. Some commentators have understood the Son of Man in this vision as a high priest, clothed in the highly priestly ‘long robe’ (  æÅ) and golden belt (Josephus, Ant. 3.153–55, 159; cf. Exod. 28:4; Lev. 16:4; Wisdom 18:24), standing in the midst of seven menorahs (cf. Exod. 25:31–40; 37:17).49 Such a reading provides an additional lens through which the Patmos vision might be interpreted. Patmos becomes the point of access to the divine presence. John’s statement that he was K Æ Ø also connects him to visionary antecedents such as Ezekiel (e.g. Ezek. 2:2; 3:12, 14, 24; 43:5). If the text invites association between Patmos and a Temple vision, then further interpretative possibilities follow. Martha Himmelfarb has drawn attention to the close association of the Temple and the Garden of Eden in Jewish visionary texts (Ezek. 40–48; 1 En. 18; 24–25; Sir. 24).50 Ezekiel’s new Temple has a river flowing out from it, and trees of every kind on its banks (Ezek. 47:7–12; cf. Gen. 2:9). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Gen. 2:7 makes the link even stronger by having Adam created out of dust from the Temple, and then taken ‘from the mountain of worship’ (Tg. Ps.-J. on Gen. 2:15) to dwell in Eden: And the Lord God created man with two inclinations. And he took dust from the place of the Temple and from the four winds of the world, and he mixed them from all the waters of the world and he created him ruddy, black and white.51

In the second of the tour narratives in the Book of the Watchers, Enoch comes to seven mountains, on the middle one of which is the throne of God with the tree of life (1 En. 24–25). In Enoch’s vision, in other words, aspects of Eden such as the tree of life have been transplanted to the Temple in the eschatological future. Enoch will later also come to the Garden of Righteousness in the east (1 En. 32). A similar tradition is preserved in the Book of Jubilees: ‘And he

49 50

E.g. Knight 1999: 39; Smalley 2005: 54; Fletcher-Louis 2007: 59. 51 Himmelfarb 1991. Bowker 1969: 110.

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was taken away from the sons of men, and we conducted him into the garden of Eden in majesty and honour . . .’ (Jub. 4:23).52 In Sirach, Wisdom herself, identified with Torah and established in the Temple, is the tree of life for her people (Sir. 24; cf. Prov. 3:18). Wisdom-Torah is compared at Sir. 24:25–27 to the four rivers of Eden, along with the Jordan. Similarly, later in Rev. 21–22, John will view the descent of the new Jerusalem, which is both a new Temple (with the dimensions of Solomon’s Holy of Holies) and a renewed Eden (containing the tree and river of life). What it might mean for the interpretation of Revelation to view Patmos as a new Jerusalem, or a new Eden, is a question ripe for exploration.

POSSIBLE PATMOS ALLUSIONS ELSEWHERE IN APOCALYPSE The author jumps from heaven to earth and back again, and we do not always know whether the phenomena he describes are here or there. The paradox leaves artists, preachers, scholars and other readers alike with the exciting and challenging task of putting together the pieces of this spatial-visual jigsaw puzzle . . . 53

This perceptive comment of Jorunn Økland highlights the particular interpretative dilemma posed for any interpreter of this apparently chaotic text. But it is also pertinent for considering the place of Patmos in the Apocalypse. For the frequent jumping ‘from heaven to earth and back again’ offers the possibility of seeing Patmos as the setting, not simply for the inaugural vision of Rev. 1, but for other visionary passages also. The ‘after this’ and ‘immediately’ ( a ÆF Æ . . . PŁ ø) of Rev. 4:1–2, for example, would suggest that it was from Patmos that John was caught up ‘in spirit’ to witness the remainder of his visions. No doubt it is partly on these grounds that some scholars have explored the possible effect on John of his physical environment. The rocky, barren character of the island, or the separation of John’s visionary cosmos into land, sea, and islands (e.g. Rev. 6:14; 13:1), are particular examples of this. Theodore Bent put forward the intriguing theory that the events accompanying the opening of the sixth seal at

52

Translation from Sparks 1984: 23. According to Jub. 4:26, there are four places on earth holy to the Lord: ‘the garden of Eden, the mount of the east, this mountain on which you are to-day (mount Sinai), and mount Zion, which in the new creation will be set apart for the hallowing of the earth’. 53
kland 2009: 8.

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Rev. 6:12–17 are due to John’s having witnessed the eruption of the volcanic island of Thera or Santorini which began in 60 ce.54 Yet there are specific points in the Apocalypse where John the seer appears to be back on earth, Patmos being the most obvious location suggested by the narrative. In Rev. 10, a mighty angel descends to earth with a little scroll, which John is commanded to devour. Depictions of this scene in medieval illuminated Apocalypses regularly portray John’s physical environment in a manner similar to their depictions of Rev. 1:9. Nor is this confined to visual exegesis: it is in the context of his commentary on Rev. 10 that Victorinus makes his specific comments about Patmos and the nature of John’s exile there. Within the narrative, John would then still be on Patmos at the beginning of Rev. 11, when he is invited to measure ‘the temple of God’ (Rev. 11:1). A second possibility comes at the end of Rev. 12. Manuscripts differ as to their reading of Rev. 12:18. While many read ‘and he stood on the shore of the sea’ (ŒÆd K ŁÅ Kd c ¼  B ŁÆºÅ, referring to the dragon, ready to witness his first beast emerging from the sea), the variant first person singular ‘I stood’ (K ŁÅ) is also attested. This reading (which was adopted by the Textus Receptus, and thus influenced English-speaking Christianity through the AV) envisages John standing on the shore of Patmos, at that liminal point between land and sea, to witness the emergence of the beast himself.55 Finally, the text raises the tantalizing question of the location of the desert and high mountain, from which vantage points John is privileged to see Babylon and the new Jerusalem respectively (Rev. 17:3; 21:10). Has John been taken ‘in spirit’ to another part of the globe, akin to Enoch’s journey to the ends of the earth? Or are we to envisage both destinations—whether actual or mythic—as located somewhere on Patmos island, its own boundaries expanding to incorporate such visionary places? In the case of the Babylon vision, Geil speaks suggestively of the ‘seven mountains of Patmos’ (cf. Rev. 17:9).56 With respect to the new Jerusalem vision, later associations made between Patmos and Jerusalem (Patmos being ‘the Jerusalem of the Aegean’)57 point to at least some interpreters of the Apocalypse understanding the heavenly city to have descended to John’s island. These passages suggest that Patmos might play a more central narrative role than often proposed.

54

Bent 1888. It is found in P 046 051 and most minuscules: Metzger 1971: 748. This is Sir William Ramsay’s preferred reading: Ramsay 1904: 86–7. 56 Geil 1897: 61. 57 Although sometimes claimed (though without attribution) that this title is found on a 5th-century inscription, I have so far been unable to locate evidence for this. 55

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CO NCLUSION The aim of the previous discussion has been to flag up the rich interpretative potential suggested by a close reading of the text, particularly if one attends both to the wider narrative of the Apocalypse on the one hand, with its rich tapestry of intertextual echoes of biblical and non-canonical texts, and the broader associations of Patmos as an island of the ancient Aegean world on the other. The potential of the text having been considered, Chapters 2–7 turn to a chronological-genealogical catalogue of the actual treatment of Patmos in Revelation’s wider reception history, including its visual reception, from the 2nd century through to the 21st. It will then be part of the work of the final chapter to consider the extent to which the different possibilities outlined in this chapter have been taken up and developed in the emerging history of reception, and indicate avenues for future fruitful reflection.

2 Patmos in Early Patristic Tradition (2nd–5th Centuries) INTRODUCTION Our reception-historical survey begins in the foundational early patristic period, up to the end of the 5th century (i.e. before the relative ‘explosion’ of Apocalypse commentaries in the 6th century). References to John’s island of Patmos in this period are largely located in non-commentary passages concerned with the identity and biography of John of Patmos (generally, although not universally, identified with John the son of Zebedee and Fourth Evangelist).1 The main contours of this evolving biography have been traced especially by Alan Culpepper in his John the Son of Zebedee.2 Culpepper’s book is a useful starting point for identifying key patristic traditions about Patmos and their interrelationships, although it needs to be supplemented by other bibliographical resources such as Biblia Patristica, and the valuable bibliographical guide of Francis X. Gumerlock.3 A major reason for our dependence on biographical passages is the paucity of surviving Apocalypse commentaries from the first five centuries, a fact related in part to ongoing suspicion about the book’s apostolic authorship and canonical status, especially in the East. Only two commentaries have survived in any substantial form from before 500; those of Victorinus and Tyconius, together with Jerome’s revision of Victorinus. Moreover, Tyconius’s commentary can be reconstructed only with difficulty from the work of his successors, and a small number of surviving fragments.4 1 Justin Martyr, Trypho 81.4, is the first to identify the author of the Apocalypse with John the apostle, earlier than claims that John son of Zebedee wrote the Gospel. Doubts about the apostolic identity of John of Patmos were expressed, for example, by Dionysius of Alexandria and Eusebius. Neither Justin nor Dionysius refers specifically to Patmos, however. 2 Culpepper 2000. 3 Allenbach et al. 1975–1982; Gumerlock 2003. 4 Victorinus-Jerome, Caesarius, Primasius, Cassiodorus’s Complexiones, Pseudo-Jerome’s Commemoratorium, Ambrose Autpert, Bede, Beatus: Steinhauser 1987; on the Turin Fragments,

Patmos in Early Patristic Tradition (2nd–5th Centuries)

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Yet the poorly attested commentary tradition provides only a partial explanation, given that interpretation of the Apocalypse in this period is not confined to commentaries.5 An additional explanation lies in the essentially theological interests of those patristic authors whose interpretations of Revelation have survived, leading them to focus less on the narrative setting of John’s visions than on the content of the visions themselves, and prioritizing certain of these visions to the detriment of others. Charles Helms’s analysis of patristic exegesis from Papias to Eusebius divides it into three categories, none of which encourage interest in Patmos per se: 1) a chiliastic reading (inevitably prioritizing the millennium of Rev. 20); 2) an eschatological interpretation, in direct response to spiritualizing Hellenizers such as the Gnostics, Marcion, and Hermogenes; 3) a Christo-centric exegesis, attending to the book as a coherent whole, presenting ‘the ongoing self-revelation of Jesus Christ to his saints’.6 Furthermore, Revelation’s identification of Patmos as the terrestrial setting for the ensuing visions (Rev. 1:9), rather than part of the visions themselves, prioritizes an interpretation which locates the island within John’s personal story. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the main line of interpretation which emerges is a literal one. Interpreters consider Patmos as an actual geographical location within the Greco-Roman world, and the role which it plays within the wider hagiography of John the apostle.7 It finds its most developed form in the various apocryphal lives of John (notably the Greek Acts of John by Prochorus, which will be considered in Chapter 5). The description of these early patristic interpretations as ‘literal’, however, requires some explanation. As argued in Chapter 1, the literal sense of Rev. 1:9 is highly ambiguous. It is a text whose gaps invite expansion and imaginative biographical reconstruction. As John Lyons notes, commenting on the more general role of the imagination in the scholarly enterprise, this is as true for historical critics as for any other interpreter.8 What the early commentators

see Tyconius, ed. LoBue 1963. Gryson has now published a critical edition of Tyconius’s reconstructed commentary: Tyconius, ed. Gryson 2011. 5 On Apocalypse exegesis more widely, see e.g. Stonehouse 1929; Corsini 1980: 11–32; Maier 1981; Kretschmar 1985: 69–115; Helms 1991; Daley 2000; Kannengiesser 2004: 368–73. 6 Helms 1991: 3–13. 7 This consideration somewhat obviates the necessity of engaging in the complex debates about appropriate categorization of patristic exegesis, particularly the precise definition of the terms ‘figural’, ‘figurative’, ‘typological’, and ‘allegorical’: see e.g. Dawson 1992 and 2002; Young 2003: 335–8; O’Keefe and Reno 2005; Martens 2008 (terminology will be defined when used at relevant points in this monograph). Martens in particular offers an incisive analysis of Origen’s biblical hermeneutics in order to challenge the view, common since Daniélou, that the typological/allegorical distinction denotes better and worse forms of non-literal exegesis. 8 Lyons 2010: 216.

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have in common is their conviction that Revelation needs to be set within a broader narrative, in which the narrative ‘I’ is granted both a past and a future. Moreover, unlike modern historical critics, they recount this broader narrative for didactic and even imitative purposes. They are as concerned to invite reader participation as to recount the historia of the apostle. Within this early literal-biographical interpretation of Patmos, two strands emerge fairly consistently. The first interprets ‘on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus’ at Rev. 1:9 in terms of John’s exile to the island, normally though not universally attributed to a decree of the Emperor Domitian. Within this broad consensus, however, there is significant variation in details, reflecting different responses to the gaps within the biblical text. Occasionally, the Patmos exile is interpreted as a form of martyrdom (picking up on the pervasive language of Ææ ıæÆ),9 or a continuation of John’s previous persecution by the Roman authorities. Moreover, patristic readings along such lines may be distinguished from the purely historical interests of modern critical scholars, who are equally interested in John’s Patmos sojourn as exile by imperial decree. A number of early authors write in a context of actual or potential persecution from Roman imperial authorities. Thus, they prioritize an interpretation of Rev. 1:9 which finds a correlation between their own situation and that of the seer of Patmos; i.e. exile and persecution by imperial decree. Their readings, although rooted in a literal interpretation of Patmos, would then be examples of what Kovacs and Rowland call ‘actualizations’ of the text, according to which interpreters read their own circumstances through the lens of the biblical text.10 There is, however, a second line of interpretation of Patmos found in patristic texts, which is less commonly reflected in modern critical commentaries. This emphasizes the status of Patmos as place of revelation, where John is granted privileged access to heavenly mysteries. It plays on the ambiguity inherent in the Greek phrase Øa e ºª  F Ł F and the Vulgate’s propter verbum Dei, which could be interpreted as a divine impulse to retreat to the island in search of prophetic inspiration. It also hints at a blurring of the distinction, noted by Himmelfarb in her discussion of Jewish visionary texts, between real and mythic geography.11 Nevertheless, these two strands—place of exile and place of vision—are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Indeed, the twin motifs of prophet-visionary and exile may underlie comparisons sometimes made between John and his visionary predecessors Daniel or Ezekiel. This notwithstanding, the following

9 The noun Ææ ıæÆ occurs at Rev. 1:2, 9; 6:9; 11:7; 12:11, 17; 19:10 (x 2); 20:4; Ææ æØ v at Rev. 15:5; æ ı at Rev. 1:5; 2:13; 3:14; 11:3; 17:6; the verb Ææ ıæ ø at 1:2; 22:16, 18, 20. 10 Kovacs and Rowland 2004: 7–11. 11 Himmelfarb 1991: 63.

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chronological survey has opted to maintain this thematic division, in order to highlight probable or certain genealogical relationships between writers.

PATMOS AS PLACE OF EXILE The dominant, although not exclusive, patristic interpretation of Rev. 1:9 understands Patmos as John’s geographical place of exile as a result of Roman imperial action; that is, it emphasizes Patmos as dislocation. It takes as its starting point a paraphrastic reading of Øa e ºª  F Ł F as ‘on account of preaching the word of God’, interpreted in the light of John’s claim to be ‘sharer in the tribulation’ (Rev. 1:9), and of anti-imperial motifs within the Apocalypse more widely (e.g. Rev. 6:2; 13:3, 18; 17:8–11). Although other emperors are sometimes identified as his persecutor (e.g. Claudius, Nero, Trajan), the majority view links John’s exile with the actions of the Emperor Domitian (81–96). Within the evolving patristic biographies of John, one finds considerable variation in the details.

Irenaeus The seeds for this Domitianic connection seem to lie with Irenaeus (c.130–200), in a passage from his Adversus Haereses (c.185). Irenaeus’s immediate concern is to dampen down speculation about the number of the Antichrist on the basis of Rev. 13:18, stressing how recently John’s visions were received (Adv. Haer. 5.30.3): For that was seen no very long time since, but almost in our day, towards the end of Domitian’s reign [æe fiH ºØ B ˜  ØÆ F IæåB].12

Irenaeus also knows the tradition that John was still alive in Asia, after his return from Patmos, until the reign of Trajan (emperor 98–117; Adv. Haer. 2.22.5; cf. 3.3.4). Irenaeus makes no explicit reference to the location of John on Patmos. Nor, surprisingly, does he connect Domitian with the persecution of John, despite the fact that he was himself the bishop of a threatened and persecuted church.13 However, his testimony is important for the link it makes between

12 English translation from Apostolic Fathers, ed. Roberts and Donaldson 1994: 559–60; Greek text in Irenaeus of Lyon, ed. Rousseau and Doutreleau 1969: 384. 13 Daley 2000: 9.

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John’s seeing the Apocalypse (on the standard reading)14 and the last years of Domitian’s reign. The role of Domitian in John’s story, and an explicit connection between this emperor and the Patmos sojourn, will become increasingly central to the reception history of Revelation in the centuries to come.

Clement of Alexandria Slightly later than Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria (c.150–c.215) has one brief reference to Patmos. In his Quis dives salvetur, a sermon-essay on the story of the rich man in Mark 10:17–31, Clement cites a tradition connecting John’s stay on Patmos with the decision of a ‘tyrant’, presumably a tyrannical emperor, rescinded on that emperor’s death. When describing John’s activity in Ephesus and surrounding districts after his sojourn on the island, Clement writes (Quis dives 42): For after the death of the tyrant [ F ıæ ı] he passed from the island of Patmos to Ephesus . . .15

Clement insists that this is a true tradition about the apostle preserved in memory (ºª  æd
ø ı F I  º ı ÆæÆ    ŒÆd  fiÅ çıºÆª  ). The ‘tyrant’ in this story is unnamed, although Clement probably expects his audience to know his identity. Moreover, Clement’s choice of word suggests, albeit implicitly, enforced exile by imperial decree as the most likely explanation for John’s location on Patmos. This would account for the statement that John ‘passed’ ( BºŁ) from Patmos to Ephesus only after the tyrant’s death. At a later date, Clement will be one important source for Eusebius, who explicitly identifies Clement’s ‘tyrant’ as Domitian (H.E. 3.23.6–19).

Tertullian Clement’s North African contemporary Tertullian (c.160–c.225) is explicit in interpreting John’s stay on Patmos as exile.16 Indeed, he is the first to use the 14 The neuter visum in the Latin version (as opposed to the more ambiguous Greek øæŁÅ) might suggest that what ‘was seen’ at the end of Domitian’s reign was not the Apocalypse (which would require a feminine) or John himself (a masculine), but the name, nomen, of Antichrist. See Boxall 2002: 90. 15 English translation from Culpepper 2000: 142; Greek text in Clement of Alexandria, ed. Migne 1857: 648. See also Horn 2005: 154. 16 Tertullian makes clear that this John is John son of Zebedee, the Fourth Evangelist and elder of the epistles: Adv. Marc. 4.2; 5.16.

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technical Latin term relegatur, which Caird regards as a significant choice given Tertullian’s training as a lawyer.17 The passage in question (De Praescr. 36.3, written in 203)18 is describing the virtues of the Church of Rome, where he studied philosophy and history.19 Tertullian refers to a tradition of John’s persecution in that city, alongside the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul, linking all three as co-martyrs as well as co-apostles of the Roman Church: How happy is its church, on which apostles poured forth all their doctrine along with their blood! where Peter endures a passion like his Lord’s! Paul wins his crown in a death like John’s [the Baptist]! where the Apostle John was first plunged, unhurt, into boiling oil, and thence remitted to his island-exile! [ubi Apostolus Joannes, posteaquam, in oleum igneum demersus, nihil passus est, in insulam relegatur]20

Two interesting features emerge from Tertullian’s statement: the categorization of John’s exile, and his role as a ‘martyr’. In relation to the first, Tertullian explicitly interprets the punishment imposed on John as relegatio in insulam.21 This has implications for his understanding of John’s social status, given that such a punishment was generally reserved for the noble classes. It was also a penalty which could be imposed by Roman governors, unlike deportatio in insulam which required a decree of the emperor.22 Tertullian thus underscores the involuntary nature of John’s time on Patmos. John did not seek Patmos out, either as a place of reflection or escape, but was exiled there by Roman authorities. Second, despite the choice of the verb relegatur, Tertullian clearly knows the form of the legend (common in later lives of John) whereby the Emperor Domitian had John plunged into boiling oil outside the Latin Gate in Rome, before banishing him to Patmos. This event is commemorated by the Roman chapel of San Giovanni in Olio near the Basilica of St John by the Latin Gate, and by the Western Feast of St John ante Portam Latinam (6th May).23 The fact that he does not expand on it suggests that it was a well-known tradition among Latin Christians, alongside that of Peter’s crucifixion and Paul’s beheading. Tertullian may well have learned of it during his time in Rome.24

17

Caird 1966: 21–2. Kannengiesser 2004: 600. 19 Culpepper 2000: 139. 20 English translation from Culpepper 2000: 140; Latin text in Tertullian, ed. Migne 1844: 49. 21 Caird 1966: 20. 22 See Aune 1997: 77–80. This language of relegatio continues to dominate the tradition, even where the Emperor Domitian is regarded as key player. 23 An alternative version locates the episode in Ephesus, from where John is banished to Patmos. See e.g. Junod and Kaestli 1983: II, 775–80. 24 See Junod and Kaestli 1983: II, 779 for the view that this link with Rome is Tertullian’s creation, to establish Rome’s authority over the other churches of apostolic foundation. 18

34

Patmos in the Reception History of the Apocalypse

In the light of comments by Tertullian’s eastern contemporary Origen (see section on Origen following), it is possible that such a tradition serves to present the apostle as a martyr, despite the widespread tradition that John lived to a ripe old age (cf. John 21:22) and was the only member of the twelve to be spared a martyr’s death.25 His sharing in the ‘tribulation’ (Rev. 1:9) includes his harsh treatment by the emperor in Rome, the oil episode, and the exile—in Tertullian’s vocabulary an example of relegatio ad insulam—to Patmos itself. This would be in line with Tertullian’s overall interpretation of the Apocalypse as a book of consolation for the martyrs, read against the backdrop of Roman persecution of Christians in North Africa at the beginning of the 3rd century.26 John’s own journey to Patmos would then be ‘actualized’ in the experience of Tertullian and his North African Christian brethren, who share the contemporary ‘tribulation’ with their ‘brother John’.

Hippolytus A similar focus on Domitianic exile may be found in Hippolytus. Scholars continue to debate the provenance of the various writings attributed to Hippolytus, and whether two different figures of that name (a Roman presbyter-martyr who lived c.170–c.236, and an eastern bishop) are responsible for the Hippolytan corpus.27 Leaving aside such authorial discussions, reconstructions of Hippolytus on the Apocalypse are not straightforward. Fragments from his Apologia pro apocalypsi et evangelio are preserved in Andreas of Caesarea’s Greek commentary, the 12th-century Syriac commentary of Dionysius bar Salîbî, and an anonymous 13th-century Arabic commentary.28 The so-called Capitula contra Gaium, also surviving only in fragments, are now believed to be part of this Apology.29 Our interest lies in two passages in bar Salîbî’s commentary, available in Pierre Prigent’s French translation, which Prigent believes may be attributed with little risk of error to a Hippolytan source.30 The first focuses on the exilic character of Patmos (a second passage will be discussed in the section on Hippolytis, following below). Bar Salîbî is commenting on Rev. 10:11, a

25

In a variant tradition, John is martyred like his brother James: Culpepper 2000: 170–4. On this see Rankin 1995. 27 Hill 2001: 160–1; Cerrato 2002. In favour of at least two authors, and an evolving community tradition, see Brent 1995. 28 Helms 1991: 140, 347 n. 1. 29 Helms 1991: 140, 347 n. 3; Gumerlock 2003: 6–7. On the eschatology of the Hippolytan writings, see Dunbar 1983. 30 Prigent 1972; see also Prigent and Stehly 1973. 26

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passage which (along with Rev. 1:9) often prompts commentators to make reference to Patmos:31 And he told me: ‘You must prophesy again over peoples, nations, and kings.’ Thus he indicates the preaching of the Gospel, which happened in Asia. First he gave the Apocalypse on the island of Patmos, while he was exiled there by Domitian; after he had returned to Asia, he began the Gospel. That is why it says: ‘You must prophesy again over peoples’, because all the nations had to hear the prophecy which is contained in the Gospel.32

If this passage is indeed Hippolytan (and Brent warns, following Gwynn, that bar Salîbî’s quotations look like highly compressed summaries),33 then it provides early evidence for belief in the chronological priority of the Apocalypse over the Fourth Gospel. Patmos is here presented as the place of inspired writing, where Revelation was composed, and a new prophetic writing announced. This new prophecy for which John is commissioned in Rev. 10 is the prophecy contained ‘in the Gospel’, which he will both preach and put in writing on his return to Asia. This same chronology of the transcribing of the two Johannine writings is found in the so-called ‘anti-Marcionite’ Prologue to Luke (one of the Prologues dated by Harnack to c.160–180 ce, though more recently assigned to between the 3rd34 and 6th35 centuries): Afterwards John the apostle transcribed first the Revelation on the island of Pathmos [descripsit primum revelationem in insula Pathmos], then the Gospel in Asia.36

Origen Origen (c.185–254), perhaps influenced by his Alexandrian predecessor Clement, gives a fuller picture of John’s Patmos exile. Unfortunately, if Origen

31

In Rev. 10, a mighty angel comes to John on Patmos and urges him to eat the little scroll he holds. 32 Prigent 1972: 410, my translation from the French. A Latin translation can be found at Dionysius bar-Salibi, ed. Sedlacek 1910: 11. 33 Brent 1995: 148–50; Gwynn 1888: 404–5. 34 So Heard 1955: 7. 35 Culpepper 2000: 129–30. 36 Der Lukasprolog I, lines 19–20: Latin text in Regul 1969: 30–1. Eisler 1938: 22 has an alternative Latin translation which he attributes to Fortunatian, companion of Priscillian, from the early 4th century: Postmodum Iohannes apostolus scripsit Apocalypsin in insula Pathmos deinde evangelium in Asia. He also cites the Greek version, preserved in a 9th-century manuscript: o æ  b ’IøÅ › I º  KŒ H ŒÆ ªæÆł c `
 ŒºıłØ K B fi  ø fi — ø fi ŒÆd  a ÆF Æ e Pƪª ºØ .

36

Patmos in the Reception History of the Apocalypse

ever wrote his intended Apocalypse commentary, it has not survived, nor have his Twelve Homilies on the Apocalypse (referred to in the prologue to an anonymous medieval Irish Apocalypse commentary, found in one manuscript in Bamberg).37 There are some surviving scholia attributed to Origen, originally published by Diobouniotis and Harnack. This edition, however, also contains non-Origenist scholia by Clement of Alexandria and Didymus the Blind, as well as citations from Irenaeus.38 Although the remaining scholia may be Origenist in theology, there is scholarly scepticism over authorship by Origen himself.39 The scholion relating to Rev. 1:8–16 need not detain us, as it contains no reference to Patmos. Nevertheless, one passage in Origen’s commentary on Matthew’s Gospel is relevant to our purposes (In Matt. 16.6), although not offering an Origenist allegorical interpretation.40 When commenting on Matt. 20:23 (where both sons of Zebedee promise to share Christ’s cup of suffering and his baptism), Origen is explicit in interpreting John’s exile on Patmos as a ‘martyrdom’ (building on the Ææ ıæÆ language of Revelation), although one which did not end in physical death: The sons of Zebedee drank the cup and were baptized with the baptism, seeing that Herod killed James the brother of John with the sword; and the emperor of the Romans—so tradition teaches—sentenced John, who testified on account of the word of truth, to the island of Patmos [ŒÆ ŒÆ e
øÅ Ææ ıæ F Æ Øa e B IºÅŁÆ ºª  N П   c B ].41

There may be more than historical interest in Origen’s concern for martyrdom, just as Tertullian’s earlier interpretation reflected his own context of Roman persecution. Origen’s father, Leonides, was martyred during the persecution of Septimius Severus, another ‘emperor of the Romans’.42 The potential for actualization may be accentuated by the fact that Origen, like Clement, does not name John’s antagonist. Origen is also interested in juxtaposing John’s ‘emperor of the Romans’ with Herod (Agrippa) as the king who martyred John’s brother James (Acts 12:2) Thus the two ‘sons of thunder’ are more clearly identified as martyrtwins. John’s witness to the word of truth which led to his imperial exile

37 Bamberg Staatliche Bibliothek Patr. 102 (B.V. 18): Kelly 1985. For the text of the Irish commentary, see LoMenzo Rapisarda (ed.) 1966. 38 Diobouniotis and Harnack 1911. The scholia were re-edited by Robinson 1912 and Turner 1923; see also Gumerlock 2003: 7; Kannengiesser 2004: 368. 39 Helms 1991: 179, 363–5 n. 3. 40 Brian Daley notes Origen’s ‘complex and carefully nuanced’ use of apocalyptic tradition: Daley 2000: 15. 41 Greek text in Origen, ed. Migne 1862: 1385. 42 Froom 1946–1952: I, 312.

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is understood as his sharing in tribulation (Rev. 1:9). He notes that this testimony-martyrdom is in accordance with John’s own self-designation at Rev. 1:9.

Victorinus of Pettau The earliest surviving Latin commentary on the Apocalypse, by Victorinus of Pettau in Pannonia (modern Ptuj in Slovenia), dates from the second half of the 3rd century. Dulaey proposes a date of c.258–260, under the Emperor Gallienus.43 The commentary is most commonly known through Jerome’s various later recensions (referred to as Victorinus-Jerome), which toned down Victorinus’s more explicitly chiliastic interpretations, and show evidence of Tyconian influence.44 Victorinus subsequently died a martyr’s death, either under Diocletian c.304, or in an earlier persecution under Numerius c.283–284.45 Although these two persecutions are too late to have left their mark on his commentary, the knowledge of the recent persecution under Valerian (257–258) might have suggested parallels between Victorinus’s time and that of John of Patmos, who suffered at the hands of another Roman emperor.46 Victorinus’s comments on Patmos are relatively brief, confined to his commentary on Rev. 10:11, where, having devoured the little scroll, John is told by the ‘mighty angel’ that he must ‘prophesy again’. Victorinus comments thus (In Apocalypsin 10.3): He said, You must preach again, that is prophesy, over peoples, languages and nations: i.e. because, when John saw this, he was on the island of Pathmos, condemned to the mines by Caesar Domitian. Therefore it seems that John wrote the Apocalypse there. But when, now an old man, he thought he could be received47 after suffering [et cum iam seniorem se putasset post passionem recipi posse], Domitian was killed, all his decrees were annulled, and John was released from the mines. So afterwards he handed on this same Apocalypse which he had received from the Lord. That is: You must prophesy again.48

43

Victorinus, ed. Dulaey 1997: 15. For the text of Victorinus’s commentary, see Victorinus, ed. Dulaey 1997; also Victorinus, ed. Haussleiter 1916: 92. On Victorinus, see Helms 1991: 288–29; Gryson 1997a: 305–11. 45 For the view that he was martyred under Numerius, see Gryson 1997a: 307; Victorinus, ed. Dulaey 1997: 16. 46 Daley mentions Valerian’s persecution as one of those moments of ‘apocalyptic revival’, which would fit Dulaey’s dating for Victorinus’s commentary: Daley 2000: 6; see also Matter 1992: 39. 47 Possibly into the Lord’s presence. 48 Latin text in Victorinus, ed. Dulaey 1997: 92. 44

38

Patmos in the Reception History of the Apocalypse

One manuscript of Victorinus’s commentary (Codex Ottobonianus Latinus 3288 A) has the intriguing reading ‘Partha’ instead of ‘Patmos’. This would locate John’s exile not on an Aegean island but in the mainland territory of the Parthian empire (present-day Iran).49 Haussleiter and Dulaey agree in their explanation of this variant: that it is related to the title sometimes given to 1 John of ad Parthos, ‘to the Parthians’, a description known to both Augustine and Bede.50 Culpepper suggests that ad Parthos might be understood as a corruption of ‘to the virgins’ or ‘of the virgin’ (from the Greek ÆæŁ  ), reflecting a widespread tradition about John as ‘virgin apostle’.51 For Victorinus, in a slightly different manner to Hippolytus (in Prigent’s reconstruction), the command to John to preach or prophesy again (Rev. 10:11) is fulfilled in John’s life. Having received the Apocalypse on Patmos, the assassination of Domitian, and his own subsequent release from the mines, provides John with the opportunity to preach it again in person to the Asian churches. The Book of Revelation is, as Victorinus goes on to explain in an allegorical interpretation, the reed like a rod of Rev. 11:1. An additional feature presents Patmos as the place of divinely inspired writing: John wrote the Apocalypse while on the island (ibi ergo uidetur Iohannes Apocalypsim conscripsisse).52 Victorinus’s description of John’s conditions on Patmos marks a key stage in the reception history. He is the first patristic writer to specify that John was condemned to the mines (in metallum damnatus) while on the island. Dulaey describes it thus: ‘Détail unique dans la tradition.’53 There is in fact no evidence for the presence of mines on Patmos.54 Nor is it historically plausible, as Joseph Sanders notes: No doubt the conditions of working as a slave in a Roman mine would be conducive to apocalyptic visions, but they would leave no leisure for writing them down at the time, or much prospect of survival to record them later.55

Wherever Victorinus derived this detail from, he laid the foundation for subsequent imaginative reconstructions of the harsh conditions of John’s exile.56

49 Possible echoes of Parthian warriors in the Apocalypse include Rev. 6:2; 9:13–19; 16:12. This reading is also found in a manuscript of Revelation in Trinity College, Dublin: Gryson 2000–2003: 126–7. 50 Victorinus, ed. Haussleiter 1916: 92; Victorinus, ed. Dulaey 1997: 185. 51 Culpepper 2000: 169. 52 For a variant reading underlying the translation cited by Culpepper 2000: 150 (‘There, therefore, he saw the Apocalypse . . . ‘), see section on Jerome below. 53 Victorinus, ed. Dulaey 1997: 75. 54 Witherington 2003: 79. 55 Sanders 1963: 76. 56 E.g. Foxe 1839:16; Morris 1987:52. One recent example is the film version Apocalypsis: Revelation (2002), directed by Rafaelle Mertes, and starring Richard Harris as John.

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Eusebius of Caesarea A number of traditions about John and Patmos have been preserved by Eusebius of Caesarea (c.260–c.340).57 One of Eusebius’s sources is Clement of Alexandria, to whom Eusebius owes the tradition that John left Patmos for Ephesus after the death of ‘the tyrant’ (H.E. 3.23.6–19). Eusebius also knows Irenaeus’s testimony about John’s Apocalypse, or John himself, being ‘seen’ towards the end of Domitian’s reign (H.E. 3.18.1). However, he takes us beyond both Irenaeus and Clement. In his Chronicon, locating John 2114 years after Abraham,58 Eusebius attests the tradition that John’s stay on Patmos was due to a decree of Domitian, rescinded by the senate on his death, and that he returned to Ephesus where he lived until Trajan’s reign (the latter derived from Irenaeus).59 A similar claim is made in his Historia Ecclesiastica, which states that John was allowed to move from Patmos to Ephesus on the accession of Nerva in 96 ce (H.E. 3.20.8–9; cf. 3.21.1, 6). Eusebius also repeats Irenaeus’s testimony connecting the ‘seeing’ of the Apocalypse with Domitian’s reign. But unlike Irenaeus, he is explicit in presenting Domitian as a persecutor of the Church, during whose persecution John was exiled to Patmos (H.E. 3.18.1–3), as a consequence of his testimony:60 At this time [Domitian], the story goes, the Apostle and Evangelist John was still alive, and was condemned to live in the island of Patmos for his witness to the divine word [ B N e ŁE  ¸ª  Œ Ææ ıæÆ, П   NŒE ŒÆ ÆØŒÆŁBÆØ c B ].61

A final relevant passage comes from Eusebius’s Demonstratio evangelica, drawing on a theme already found in Tertullian. Writing about the persecution of the apostles in their following of Christ, Eusebius locates the long-lived John alongside the martyr-apostles of the church of Rome, Peter and Paul (Dem. evang. 3.5.65): Peter was crucified upside down in Rome, Paul was beheaded, and John was delivered up to an island [
øÅ   fiH ÆæÆ ÆØ].62

Again, the tradition of John the martyr, and Patmos as site of martyrdom (or part of the wider story of martyrdom), re-emerges.

57 58 59 60 61 62

For a balanced assessment of Eusebius’s attitude to the Apocalypse, see Mazzucco 1982. See Culpepper 2000: 151. Eusebius, ed. Karst 1911: 218. Hill (2004: 88) claims that Eusebius is dependent here on Hegesippus. English translation from Culpepper 2000: 151; Greek text in Eusebius, ed. Migne 1857: 252. Eusebius, ed. Heikel 1913: 122.

40

Patmos in the Reception History of the Apocalypse

Given its prominence in gospel references to the Passion (e.g. Mark 9:31; 10:33; 14:10), Eusebius’s choice of the verb ÆæÆ ÆØ may be significant. John patterns his own life on the Passion of Christ, and Patmos becomes part of his Passion narrative. There is one further possible implication of this verb. Given the use of the term in the synoptic gospels to denote God’s ultimate action in the unfolding Passion,63 ÆæÆ ÆØ may be emphasizing the outworking of the divine plan over against imperial action in the Patmos tradition. This motif of divine providence will be picked up by later interpreters, notably the author of the Prochorus Acts.

Epiphanius An unusual variation of the tradition connecting Patmos to imperial expulsion is found in Epiphanius (c.310/20–402/403), associate of Jerome and bishop of Salamis. In the relevant passage from his heresiological Panarion (written c.374–377), Epiphanius is describing how John, despite his reluctance, was divinely compelled to write the gospel in his old age (Pan. 51.12.2). Appropriately for someone defending orthodoxy against contemporary challenges, including Origenism, Epiphanius presents the aged John as a model of piety and true teaching, preserved for posterity in the gospel which bears his name:64 Therefore the Holy Spirit later compelled John, who did not want to write a gospel because of his piety and humility, to expound the gospel in his old age when he was over ninety years old, after his return from Patmos in the time of Claudius Caesar [ a c Ie B П  ı K   c Kd ˚ºÆı ı ª  Å ˚ÆÆæ ] and after he had spent many years in Asia.65

Epiphanius oddly dates John’s return from Patmos to the reign of Claudius (41–54 ce). This is a very early date in the tradition.66 In a later passage (Pan. 51.33.9), he reiterates that John prophesied on Patmos ‘during the time of Claudius Caesar and earlier’. It is possible that Epiphanius is confused about the emperor: two early Syriac versions date the Patmos period to Nero’s reign, and both Claudius and Nero were known as Claudius Nero.67 Either way, Epiphanius testifies to a Patmos sojourn much earlier than Domitian’s reign. In contrast, the writing of John’s Gospel is dated to the very end of 63

E.g. Hooker 1991: 53–4. See Culpepper 2000: 157–9. 65 English translation from Epiphanius, ed. Amidon 1990: 180; Greek text in Epiphanius, ed. Holl 1980: 263–4. 66 Eisler 1938: 92 claims that this Claudian dating derives ultimately from Gaius. An even earlier dating is found in Mingana Syriac 540 (dated c.750), which claims that John was banished to Patmos by the Emperor Tiberius (14–37 ce): see Culpepper 2000: 230. 67 Boxall 2002: 90. 64

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John’s life, after he was over ninety. By implication, the Apocalypse would have been written several decades before, making it an early writing in the Johannine trajectory. Here Epiphanius concurs with Hippolytus and the ‘anti-Marcionite’ Prologue to Luke.

Jerome Given his prominence among the Fathers for his impressive biblical scholarship, it is not surprising that Jerome (c.340–420) comments on both the Apocalypse and Patmos specifically. Perhaps Jerome’s most interesting comment can be found in his treatise Adversus Jovinianum, in defence of virginity (Adv. Jov. 1.26). Here he contrasts Peter, who was only an apostle, with John, who has a threefold fame as apostle, evangelist, and prophet. The latter designation is explicitly connected to the Apocalypse, seen during his stay on Patmos: Peter is an Apostle, and John is an Apostle—the one a married man, the other a virgin; but Peter is an Apostle only, John is both an Apostle and an Evangelist, and a prophet. An Apostle, because he wrote to the Churches as a master; an Evangelist, because he composed a Gospel, a thing which no other of the Apostles, excepting Matthew, did; a prophet, for he saw in the island of Patmos, to which he had been banished by the Emperor Domitian as a martyr for the Lord, an Apocalypse containing the boundless mysteries of the future [Propheta: vidit enim in Pathmos insula, in qua fuerat a Domitiano principe ob Domini martyrium relegatus, Apocalypsim infinita futurorum mysteria continentem]. Tertullian, moreover, relates that he was sent to Rome, and that having been plunged into a jar of boiling oil he came out fresher and more active than when he went in.68

Dependent upon Tertullian, Jerome cites the Roman version of the oil episode, linked to the reign of Domitian. The martyrological significance of this tradition is emphasized by the word martyrium in place of the more usual testimonium used by Jerome in the Vulgate of Rev. 1:9 (and closely related to the Ææ ıæÆ of the Greek text). But it is John’s role as prophet-martyr which is most noteworthy in Jerome’s treatment. Given John’s description of his own book as ‘prophecy’ (æ çÅ Æ, Rev. 1:3), and strong connections between his book and those of prophetic predecessors such as Daniel and Ezekiel, one might expect to find the designation of John as propheta more frequently in the tradition. Yet Jerome is rare among patristic writers for making such a link. 68

English translation from Jerome, ed. Schaff and Wace 1994: 366; Latin text in Jerome, ed. Migne 1845a: 247.

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Patmos in the Reception History of the Apocalypse

A second passage echoes Origen in treating Patmos as part of the fulfilment of Matt. 20:23, the means by which John shares with his brother James the cup of martyrdom (calicem martyrii). Again Jerome cites the tradition of the ‘boiling oil’ episode, which he claims can be found in ‘ecclesiastical histories’, with the influence of Tertullian being unmistakable (Comm. in Evang. Matth. 3.20): He asked how the sons of Zebedee, James and John, of course, would drink the cup of martyrdom, since scripture tells how James was the only apostle beheaded by Herod (Acts 12). John, however, ended his life with his own (voluntary) death. If we read the ecclesiastical histories, we will see that John did not lack the spirit of martyrdom and drank the cup of confession which the three children in the fiery furnace drank (Dan. 3), although a persecutor did not shed his blood, for they note that he was placed in a vat of burning oil to be martyred and thence proceeded to receive the crown of a Christian athlete and immediately was dispatched to the isle of Patmos [quod et ipse propter martyrium sit missus in ferventis olei dolium, et inde ad suscipiendam coronam Christi athleta processerit, statimque relegatus in Pathmos insulam sit].69

The choice of the word calix is suggested by the cup of Matt. 20:23. Nevertheless, it might also betray knowledge of the tradition that John drank a cup of poison unharmed, as well as the oil episode which suggests the parallel with the three children in the fiery furnace of Dan. 3. Here John receives the crown as an ‘athlete of Christ’ prior to his dispatch to Patmos. He thus arrives on the shores of Patmos as a martyr. Though the juxtaposition of corona and athleta suggests an allusion to 1 Cor. 9:25 (omnis autem qui in agone contendit ab omnibus se abstinet et illi quidem ut corruptibilem coronam accipiant nos autem incorruptam), the martyrological context also points to the victor’s crown of Revelation ( çÆ ; Vulgate corona; Rev. 2:10; 3:11). We might also tentatively suggest that Jerome envisages a direct link between John’s status as martyr and that as visionary, who sees heaven opened and receives an inaugural vision of ‘the Son of God’ (Rev. 2:18). The Danielic story of the fiery furnace includes the vision of one like a ‘son of the gods’ (Dan. 3:25: Jerome’s Vulgate has similis filio Dei, cf. Theodotion’s › Æ ıƒfiH Ł F). The Acts account of the martyrdom of Stephen comprises the double motif of the heavens being opened and the vision of the Son of Man at the right hand of God (Acts 7:56). A third relevant passage comes from Jerome’s De Viris Illustribus 9,70 where he dates John’s ‘relegation’ to Patmos to the fourteenth year after Nero (i.e.

69

English translation from Culpepper 2000: 164–5; Latin text in Jerome, ed. Migne 1845b:

143.

70

Jerome, ed. Migne 1845a: 623–6.

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c.82 ce), during the early years of Domitian’s reign. He also explicitly states that the Apocalypse was written on Patmos, rather than at a later date after John’s return to Ephesus: Patmos is not simply the place of vision, but the place of committing that vision to writing. Finally, Jerome repeats the tradition (first attributed to Melito of Sardis, H.E. 4.26.9) that Domitian was a second persecutor of the Church, and that, after Nero’s death and the accession of Nerva, John was allowed to return to Ephesus where he lived until Trajan’s reign. He even gives the date of John’s death as in the sixty-eighth year following the Lord’s Passion (sexagesimo octavo post passionem Domini anno mortuus).71

Pseudo-Ignatius The authentic letters of Ignatius are surprising for their apparent ignorance of the Apocalypse, despite Ignatius writing to some of the same churches (Ephesus, Smyrna, and Philadelphia) addressed by John’s apocalyptic letter.72 There is, however, one brief reference to Patmos in a spurious letter of Ignatius ‘to the Tarsenses’ or ‘Tarsians’, one of seven inauthentic Ignatian letters which were in circulation by the 5th century. In a defence of the reality of Christ’s death on the cross, the author lists several firstgeneration Christian leaders whose willingness to suffer testifies to its salvific power (Ad Tars. 3): Otherwise, what advantage would there be in [becoming subject to] bonds, if Christ has not died? what advantage in patience? what advantage in [enduring] stripes? And why such facts as the following: Peter was crucified; Paul and James were slain with the sword; John was banished to Patmos [’IøÅ b KçıªÆ K — ø fi ]; Stephen was stoned to death by the Jews who killed the Lord? But, [in truth,] none of these sufferings were in vain; for the Lord was really crucified by the ungodly.73

Echoing Tertullian (indeed, the Latin translation has Johannes in Pathmos relegatus est), Eusebius, and Jerome, Pseudo-Ignatius treats John’s banishment to Patmos as an instance of martyrdom, hinting at an exemplary function which moves beyond mere historical curiosity.

71

Culpepper believes that Jerome’s calculation is based on Eusebius’s Chronicon which dates the crucifixion to 32 ce, thus dating John’s death to 100: Culpepper 2000: 162. 72 Charles 1920: I, xcviii. 73 English translation from Apostolic Fathers, ed. Roberts and Donaldson 1994: 107; Greek text in Lightfoot 1889: 182.

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Pseudo-Dionysius One fascinating example of the exile tradition is a letter of PseudoDionysius,74 composed in Greek though originating in Syria (Andrew Louth dates the Corpus Areopagiticum to between the late 5th and early 6th century, while Rosemary Arthur argues for a more precise date in the 520s).75 It is somewhat surprising to find a reference to Patmos in a Syrian text from this period, given the absence of the Apocalypse from the Syriac New Testament until this period.76 The letter in question is one of ten in the Dionysian corpus, which add verisimilitude to the claim of the author to be Paul’s 1st-century convert (other letters are addressed to Paul’s associate Titus, and Polycarp).77 The author,78 using the pseudonym of Dionysius the Areopagite (Acts 17:34), writes to ‘John, the theologian, apostle and evangelist, an exile on the island of Patmos’. The letter is replete with theological ideas typical of the Dionysian corpus: the claim that some have already become ‘united here and now with God’ and ‘now live like angels among men’ reflects the highest goal of the Dionysian journey, a theme made explicit in Pseudo-Dionysius’s Mystical Theology.79 The letter emphasizes John’s unjust treatment, which it connects to the activity of those unjust men who ‘drive the disciples out of the cities’ ( f ÆŁÅ a ƒ ¼ØŒ Ø H ºø KºÆ ıØ). Ultimately, however, it is a letter of assurance, grounded in ‘the things made known about you by God’ (perhaps the words of Jesus at John 21:22, or possibly prophetic revelation made to Dionysius or John): ‘namely, that you will be released from your prison on Patmos, that you will return to the land of Asia where you will continue to act in imitation of God and will hand on your legacy to those who come after you’ (‹ Ø ŒÆd B K П ø fi çıºÆŒB IçŁ fi Å ŒÆd N c Ø ØÆ ªB KÆ Ø, ŒÆd æØ KŒE F aªÆŁ F ¨ F Ø Æ Æ ŒÆd E  a b ÆæÆØ). From a genealogical perspective, the Dionysian letter represents a continuation and intensification of patristic interpretation of Patmos encountered so far; that is, it acknowledges that there are significant gaps in the biblical text, which invite an imaginative retelling of John’s biography, into which the Apocalypse itself is placed. 74 Pseudo-Dionysius, ed. Heil and Ritter, 1991: 208–10; also found in Pseudo-Dionysius, ed. Migne 1857: 1117–19; English translation from Pseudo-Dionysius, ed. Luibhéid 1987: 288–9. For brief notes, see Rorem 1993: 27–9. 75 Louth 2001: 2; Arthur 2008. 76 Gwynn 1897; although the biblical quotations in Pseudo-Dionysius show that he used not the Syriac Peshitta but the Greek Bible, which included the Apocalypse: Arthur 2008: 13. 77 Brons dismisses this letter as a secondary addition to the corpus: see Pseudo-Dionysius, ed. Luibhéid 1987: 288, n. 152. 78 Arthur, following the 8th-century Nestorian Joseph Hazzaya, Hausherr, and von Balthasar, proposes that Sergius of Reshaina was the author of the corpus: Arthur 2008: 137–8; 197. 79 Rorem 1993: 28.

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But the manner of its retelling is highly distinctive. It presupposes an imaginative context whereby John’s imprisonment on Patmos is ameliorated by two-way correspondence with Christians elsewhere. John does not merely write, as a lone exile, to the seven churches of Asia (Rev. 1:4, 11); he is also in communication with a wider Christian world. Specifically, the letter claims detailed knowledge of John’s predicament on the part of another earlier Christian figure, known like ‘John the Theologian’ for his mystical apprehension of the Christian gospel. Indeed the ‘truth of your theological teaching’ ( B B IºÅŁ F Ł º ªÆ) which the sender is ‘remembering’ may well be the Fourth Gospel itself. Alternatively, it could be the Apocalypse, received on Patmos and already disseminated as far as Athens, the implied author’s location. Rosemary Arthur has recently made the interesting proposal that the Dionysian corpus emerges from the circles of persecuted Monophysites, and was intended in part as a compendium for bishops and others in situations of persecution.80 For example, she interprets the statement that ‘unjust men drive the disciples out of the cities’ as a reference to the expulsion of Monophysite bishops from 521 ce onwards.81 If her reconstruction is correct, then Dionysius’s letter may be regarded as an example of typological interpretation (though not one involving the Old Testament text),82 or the first type of actualization in the Kovacs-Rowland sense.83 The author is juxtaposing the Johannine experience of persecution and exile to Patmos with his own time (and the treatment of ‘disciples’ of the Lord in the person of Monophysite bishops). The known end of John’s story—return to Ephesus and restoration to his congregations—thus functions as reassurance to Pseudo-Dionysius’s intended audience in the 520s.

PATMOS AS PLACE OF PRIVILEGED REVELATION If the dominant line of patristic interpretation stresses Patmos as place of exile, and in some cases ‘martyrdom’, there are other authors who emphasize its significance as the island of revelation. Such a reading exploits other 80 Arthur 2008: 101–39; this does require, as Arthur recognizes, a polemical reading of the Dionysian corpus. 81 Arthur 2008: 129. 82 E.g. Dawson 1992:15: ‘a mode of composition or interpretation that links together at least two temporally different historical events or persons because of an analogy they bear to one another’. See also Hauser and Watson 2003: 39; O’Keefe and Reno 2005: 69–88. ‘Typology’ is a relatively modern term: Martens claims it was first coined in the mid-19th century: Martens 2008: 300, n. 66. 83 Kovacs and Rowland 2004: 9–10.

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possibilities within the text of Rev. 1:9, not least reading ‘the word of God and the testimony of Jesus’ in the light of its usage at Rev. 1:2, where it clearly refers to all that John saw (‹Æ r ). Although apparently a minority interest for the authors discussed from this period, several of whom are more concerned with the parallels between John’s Patmos sojourn and their own proximity to Roman persecution, it will become particularly important for medieval interpreters.

Hippolytus Patmos as locus of divine revelation is emphasized in Hippolytus’s treatise Demonstratio de Christo et Antichristo (c.200), which Prigent sees as the source for bar Salîbî’s commentary on Rev. 16:16.84 Having commented extensively on the Danielic vision of the four beasts, and other Old Testament prophecies relating to Antichrist and Babylon, Hippolytus moves on to consider John’s similar visions (De Christo et Antichristo 36): For he sees, when in the isle Patmos, a revelation of awful mysteries [ˇy  ªaæ K — ø fi B fi  ø fi J, ›æA fi I ŒºıłØ ı Åæø çæØŒ H], which he recounts freely, and makes known to others. Tell me, blessed John, apostle and disciple of the Lord, what didst thou see and hear concerning Babylon? Arise and speak; for it sent thee also into banishment.85

He then describes John’s vision of Babylon, seated on the scarlet beast. For Hippolytus, Patmos allows John the same privileged access to heavenly mysteries afforded to Ezekiel and Daniel. The further statement that John was sent ‘into banishment’ by Babylon, an allegorical reference to Rome (cf. Rev. 17:5, 9–10), provides a further link between John and his exiled visionary predecessors, who received their visionary revelations while in exile.86

Tyconius Emphasis on Patmos as visionary location may also be present in Tyconius (c.390), one of the most original of early exegetes. Despite being a Donatist, his ecclesiological views were a major influence on Augustine’s thought, and profoundly influenced later patristic and medieval Apocalypse

84

Prigent 1972: 392–3. English translation from Hippolytus, ed. Roberts and Donaldson 1994: 211; Greek text in Hippolytus, ed. Migne 1857: 756. 86 For the possibility that Hippolytus is referring to John’s exile from Rome, see Hill 2004: 146. 85

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interpretation.87 Jerome was indebted to him in his revision of Victorinus, and Bede explicitly drew upon his commentary, as well as his Book of Rules or Liber Regularum (mediated through Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana).88 Tyconius’s Rules are especially noteworthy for their ecclesial dimension, their attention to the symbolic significance of numbers, and their recognition that the Church in the world is a corpus mixtum, which rules out certainty on the part of any interpreter of the Apocalypse that they are on the side of the Lamb rather than the beast. As noted above, Tyconius’s commentary has to be tentatively reconstructed from the works of his successors, as well as a few surviving fragments from Turin (Codex Taurinensis F.IV.1.18, formerly Bobiensis 62)89 and Budapest (Budapest S.Fr.l.m.l). Steinhauser’s assessment is that ‘the Turin Fragment, with the exception of the clear and intentional interpolations, will generally be most faithful to the original text of Tyconius’.90 However, Codex Taurinensis covers Rev. 2:18–4:1 and 7:16–12:6, with no comments on Patmos. Nevertheless, Steinhauser has detected the influence of Tyconius’s comments on Rev. 1:9 in passages from two 8th-century commentators, Beatus and Bede. Both passages emphasize Patmos’s role as the place where John was privileged to penetrate heavenly things: Beatus, commenting on ‘the Lord’s day’ (Rev. 1:10), writes that ‘on that day the apostle penetrated the things of heaven’ (in eo die apostolus caelestia penetrabat, Beatus, In Apocalypsin 1, 3, 37), while Bede speaks of John on Patmos as the one to whom it was granted the power to penetrate the secrets of heaven (cui tunc congrue secreta datum est coeli penetrare: Bede, Explanatio Apocalypsis on Rev. 1:9).91 This connection with Tyconius remains uncertain, however, and could be due to the common dependence of these two authors on Primasius: the recently published critical reconstruction of Tyconius’s commentary by Gryson begins at Rev. 1:12, with no reference to Patmos per se.92

Jerome The visionary potential of Patmos is explored in the passage from Jerome’s Adversus Jovinianum mentioned above. For Jerome, John on Patmos was privileged to see infinita futurorum mysteria, ‘the unlimited mysteries of things to come’ (Adv. Jov. 1.26). 87 88 89 90 91 92

Gryson 1997a: 311–17. Tyconius, ed. Burkitt 1894; see also Bright 1988; Rowland and Boxall 2011. Critical edition in Tyconius, ed. LoBue 1963: 621–52. Steinhauser 1987: 261. Beatus, ed. Sanders 1930: 59; Bede, ed. Migne 1850: 135. Tyconius, ed. Gryson 2011: 105.

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Secondly, Jerome’s 398 revision of Victorinus’s commentary,93 the form in which many later commentators knew the latter’s work (existing in longer and shorter recensions), also highlights the significance of Patmos as place of heavenly vision. Writing at a time when persecution was a past memory, Jerome corrected Victorinus’s Latin, revised the biblical text, and also removed explicitly chiliastic passages.94 He also added some of his own comments, and some sections from Tyconius.95 Jerome’s recension on Rev. 10, the passage relevant to Patmos, agrees substantially with the original. There are, however, a number of minor changes of significance (shown in italics under Victorinus-Jerome):96 Victorinus-Jerome: He said, You must prophesy to peoples, languages and nations: i.e. because, when John saw this, he was on the island of Pathmos, condemned to the mines by Caesar Domitian. Therefore he saw the Apocalypse [uidit apocalypsin] there.

But when, now an old man, he thought he could gain a reception through suffering [putaret se posse per passionem accepturum receptionem], Domitian was killed, all his decrees were annulled, and John was released from the mines. So afterwards he handed on this same Apocalypse which he had received from the Lord. That is: You must prophesy again.

Victorinus (Dulaey’s edition): He said, You must preach again, that is prophesy, over peoples, languages and nations: i.e. because, when John saw this, he was on the island of Pathmos, condemned to the mines by Caesar Domitian. Therefore it seems that John wrote the Apocalypse there [uidetur Iohannes Apocalypsim conscripsisse]. But when, now an old man, he thought he could be received after suffering [se putasset post passionem recipi posse], Domitian was killed, all his decrees were annulled, and John was released from the mines. So afterwards he handed on this same Apocalypse which he had received from the Lord. That is: You must prophesy again.

Two alterations are worthy of note. First, Jerome’s recension replaces Victorinus’s claim that John wrote the Apocalypse on Patmos (ibi ergo uidetur 93

This dating is that of M. Dulaey: Victorinus, ed. Dulaey 1997: 28. Wainwright 1993: 39. 95 See Steinhauser 1987: 31–2. 96 Latin text of Victorinus-Jerome in Victorinus, ed. Haussleiter 1916: 93–5; unedited Latin original from Victorinus, ed. Dulaey 1997: 92. 94

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Iohannes Apocalypsim conscripsisse) with repeated focus on Patmos as place of vision (ibi ergo uidit apocalypsim). Second, he rephrases Victorinus’s statement about John’s dismissal from the mines as follows: et cum iam senior putaret se posse per passionem accepturum receptionem. Victorinus’s original ‘after suffering’ (or ‘after the passion’, post passionem) is ambiguous. Dulaey translates it as ‘la tribulation’, understood as the ‘testing’ (épreuve) which the churches were undergoing, exploiting the ecclesiastic potential of the passage.97 However, it might be taken to refer specifically to the boiling oil episode, or even to the Lord’s own Passion. Jerome clarifies this, stating that the elderly John thought he would gain his ‘reception’ (with the Lord, presumably by death) ‘through suffering’ (per passionem). Thus he interprets the passio as John’s own, presumably all that he suffered on Patmos, interweaving the twin themes of vision and exile.

Monarchian Prologue An interesting postscript to patristic interpretations of Patmos is found in the Monarchian Prologue to John, attributed to Priscillian (d.386). Again, Patmos is envisaged as the place of inspired writing of the Apocalypse. More significantly, however, its authorship by John the ‘virgin’ means that it is the perfect balance at the end of the biblical canon to the Book of Genesis with which it begins (evoked by the evangelist in the prologue to his gospel), an incorruptibilis finis to match the incorruptibile principium of Genesis.98 In later commentaries, including the influential Glossa ordinaria, this passage is incorporated into a Prologue to the Apocalypse attributed to Jerome,99 thereby ensuring its widespread dissemination.

PATMOS IN APOCRYPHAL ACTS AND LIVES Fleeting references to events in John’s life, such as the Roman boiling oil episode referred to by Tertullian, hint at the much richer reservoir of Johannine legends below the surface of explicit patristic references. Culpepper describes the evidence, in some frustration, as like the effect of ‘viewing slides of stills rather than a motion picture’.100 In the various apocryphal Acts 97

Victorinus, ed. Dulaey 1997: 186. Das Johannesargument, lines 13–22: Regul 1969: 42–3. 99 Part of the Prologue in the Glossa is taken from Jerome’s Letter to Paulinus (Ep. 53, 9,6): ‘The Apocalypse of John contains as many secrets as words . . . ‘ (Apocalypsis Iohannis tot habet sacramenta, quot uerba . . . ): Jerome, ed. Hilberg 1996: 463. 100 Culpepper 2000: 139. 98

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and Lives of John, something more akin to a sustained biography of John the apostle-seer-evangelist comes to the fore. This final section will examine the role ascribed to Patmos in this diverse body of material. Given their importance for Orthodox interpretation of later centuries, the Acts of John by Prochorus, probably written at the end of the period under discussion (5th century), will be treated separately in Chapter 5 below.

Acts of John The earliest of these apocryphal Johannine texts are the Acts of John (AJ). Attributed since at least the 5th century to a disciple of John called Leucius,101 they were certainly known to Eusebius (H.E. 3.25.6), who dismisses them as a heretical forgery. Junod and Kaestli date them to the period 150–200, and regard them as the model for the later Acts of Thomas, Peter, and Paul.102 As Richard Pervo notes, such apocryphal Acts flourished during the heyday of the romantic novel,103 and, for all their diversity, may be seen as important examples of popular Christian fiction. They put flesh on the bare bones of inherited traditions about John’s life and ministry. Junod and Kaestli suggest that, alongside use by ‘marginal’ groups (such as Gnostics, Manicheans, and ‘courants encratites et ascétiques’), AJ may have been read by ‘mainstream’ Catholic Christians, although probably used privately, for pleasure and the edification of the listeners.104 They were condemned at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, which may explain why they only exist in a fragmentary state, in a number of different sources.105 Surprisingly, however, AJ make no reference to Patmos, at least in their present form, which is substantially concerned with John’s exploits and miracles in Ephesus.106 Pieter Lalleman has recently made the suggestion that the lost beginning of AJ comprised a scene describing the end of John’s exile on Patmos.107 This may be a better hypothesis than the alternatives: that AJ model the Syriac History of John, the Prochorus Acts, and the Acts of Thomas, in describing an opening scene of the apostles gathered in Jerusalem soon after Pentecost, or recount John’s being instructed by the risen Jesus to 101

Culpepper 2000: 188. Junod and Kaestli 1983: II, 694–700. Given AJ’s imprecise knowledge of Ephesus and Roman Asia, their provenance is traced to Syria or Alexandria. 103 Pervo 1996: 709. 104 Junod and Kaestli 1982: 21. 105 Given a statement in the Stichometry of Nicephorus that the Acts of John were about the same length as Matthew’s Gospel, it appears that approximately two-thirds have survived: Findlay 1923: 211. 106 On these, see Culpepper 2000: 187–250. 107 Lalleman 1998: 15–17. See Zahn 1880: cxxiv. 102

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remain a virgin (based on autobiographical elements present in the prayer of AJ 113).108 It would, for example, accord better with the statement at 27.9 that John was an ‘old man’ (æ  Å), and also with the reference to Miletus in the first preserved chapter of the Acts.109 Nevertheless, as Lalleman acknowledges, there is no explicit evidence that the author of AJ knew the Apocalypse. The reference to Smyrna and Laodicea as well as Ephesus, three of the seven cities named in Rev. 2–3, can be explained on other grounds: namely, knowledge of the assize tour of the Roman governor of Asia.110

Acts of John at Rome If AJ as they have come down to us lack a reference to Patmos, some later texts plug the gap. One such is the Acts of John at Rome (AJR, or AJg in Junod and Kaestli’s designation), the modern title for a Greek text, originally independent of AJ although found in some manuscripts of AJ preceding the account of John’s death (AJ 106–115), and printed as Chapters 1–14 of AJ in Bonnet’s edition of the Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha.111 Given their Trinitarian and more Catholic theology,112 their treatment of the relationship between the power of God and that of the emperor, and their debt to Eusebius, the AJR are clearly post-Constantinian (either 4th or 5th century).113 AJR trace the story of John from his arrest in Ephesus and dispatch to Rome at the instigation of Domitian, to his exile to Patmos and subsequent return to Ephesus after Domitian’s death. The text builds on the early Christian tradition that Domitian was the second great persecutor of the church after Nero, attributing to the emperor a decree that all who confessed to being Christian should be put to death (AJR 4). Against this background, John’s preaching in Ephesus comes to Domitian’s ears, notably his prophetic message that the empire of Rome was soon to be uprooted and replaced by another (‹ æd F ‘!øÆø Æغ ı ØÆçÅÇØ º ªø K åØ KŒæØÇøŁ ŁÆØ ŒÆd K æø fi c ÆغÆ H ‘!øÆø ØÆŁÆØ, AJR 5), the kingdom of Christ.114 The words K åØ (‘soon’ or ‘quickly’) echo Rev. 1:1.

108

Junod and Kaestli, 1983: I, 81–3. Patmos came under the control of Miletus in the Hellenistic period, and the two retained strong links into the Roman period: see Saffrey 1975. 110 Lalleman 1998: 19. 111 Bonnet 1898: 151–60. The Greek text, with French translation, is also found in Junod and Kaestli 1983: II, 862–80. 112 Lalleman 1998: 12–13. 113 Junod and Kaestli, 1983: II, 857. Volfing 2001: 19 dates them to the 6th century. 114 Junod and Kaestli, 1983: II, 867. 109

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This theme of the relation between the two powers—that of Christ and that of Caesar—is, in the words of Junod and Kaestli, ‘le fil conducteur’ which runs through the second part of AJR, especially the main recension ª.115 The echoes of the Apocalypse, with its vision of the destruction of the harlot Babylon, seated on the seven-headed, seven-hilled beast (Rev. 17) are strong.116 As a consequence, Domitian dispatches a centurion with a batch of soldiers to Ephesus, to bring John as prisoner to Rome. AJR 7–13 recount events in the capital, from John’s first appearance before Domitian, where the soldiers who have accompanied him from Ephesus acclaim him as a god, not a human (Łe PŒ ¼Łæø , AJR 7), for his ability to survive without food, to his dispatch to Patmos. John’s activities in Rome include drinking poison unscathed in the emperor’s presence to prove the truth of the gospel message (AJR 9–10), and reviving a dead man who drank the dregs of the poison (AJR 11). As a result of John’s raising the dead man, the emperor relents on his decree to have all Christians killed, choosing instead to exile John to an island (AJR 12). The treatment of the exile itself, however, is frustratingly brief (AJR 14): Immediately John set sail for Patmos, where he was counted worthy to see the revelation of the end [¯PŁ ø b I ºı › ’øÅ N c —  , ‹ ı ŒÆd ØŁÅ c B ı ºÆ NE I ŒºıłØ]. But when Domitian was slain, Nerva assumed imperial power, and he recalled all the exiles . . .117

The witness of AJR is valuable for at least two reasons. First, without knowledge of the boiling oil episode, the author introduces a confrontation with the emperor in Rome into John’s biography.118 The significance of this should not be underestimated. It results in an alternative narrative whereby Domitian, the great emperor, becomes a mere pawn in the grand divine scheme (cf. John 19:11). His decision to send John to Patmos remains a decision to exile, yet it is a reduced punishment, a consequence of the divine power working through the hand of John. This is even more evident in recension of AJR (an edited version): Then, seeing this, the emperor and those with him feared the God of heaven, and many came to believe in God and the apostle [ŒÆd K ıÆ  ºº d fiH ŁfiH ŒÆ fiH I  ºfiH].119

115

Junod and Kaestli, 1983: II, 847. Even more explicit echoes of the Apocalypse are found in AJR 8, where John speaks before Domitian: Junod and Kaestli 1983: II, 872–3; cf. Rev. 7:9–10; 13:5. 117 Greek text in Junod and Kaestli 1983: II, 879–80. 118 Junod and Kaestli, 1983: II, 848. 119 AJb lines 89–90: Greek text in Junod and Kaestli, 1983: II, 885. 116

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Second, AJR shares with patristic authors such as Hippolytus, Tyconius, and Jerome a focus on Patmos as place of revelation. John’s ‘worthiness’ might be connected with the stand he took before Domitian in Rome, and his earlier preaching in Ephesus of the replacement of the imperial kingdom with Christ’s kingdom. The ı ºØÆ may then be not the end in general (cf. Matt. 28:20) but specifically the end of the imperial age, set out in the Apocalypse which John was privileged to see on Patmos (especially the fall of Babylon in Rev. 17–18).

Passio Iohannis (Pseudo-Melitus) Two texts surviving only in Latin, the Passio Iohannis and Virtutes Johannis, also include John’s exile to Patmos. The relationship between them, and of both to the original AJ, is a matter of scholarly dispute. The question of dependence on AJ need not detain us here, given our particular focus. Most likely the Passio and Virtutes are dependent on a common source for the passages they share, itself probably based on the later chapters of AJ (the stories of Callimacus, Drusiana and Fortunatus, AJ 62–86, and the death or Metastasis of John, AJ 106–115), although K. Schäferdiek has argued for direct dependence of the Virtutes on the Passio.120 The Passio (also known as Pseudo-Melitus given its attribution to Bishop Melitus of Laodicea)121 derives from the late 5th century, probably from the region of Ephesus. Although surviving only in Latin, it is believed to have been originally composed in Greek.122 It became particularly well known in the Latin West throughout the Middle Ages, given that it was one of the sources drawn upon (along with Isidore’s De ortu et obitu patrum 126–128, Bede’s homily no. 9, and Augustine’s In Iohannis Evangelium 124), for the office readings for the Feast of St John on 27th December, as well as for Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend.123 The Passio begins with a brief statement about the persecution under Domitian, linking this ‘second persecution’ after Nero with John’s exile to Patmos from Ephesus:124 Domitian carried out the second persecution of Christians after Nero. Thus it happened that St John was brought from Ephesus and sent into exile in the island of Patmos; it was in this island that he wrote in his own hand the Apocalypse 120

See Junod and Kaestli 1982 and 1983; Schäferdiek 1985; Kaestli 1992; Volfing 2001: 17. For text, see Pseudo-Miletus, ed. Migne 1857. 122 Volfing 2001: 17. 123 Junod and Kaestli 1982: 106. 124 The longer recension of the Passio includes an account of the boiling oil episode by the Latin Gate in Rome, prior to John’s banishment to Patmos. See Volfing 2001: 18. 121

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which the Lord revealed to him [unde factum est ut sanctus Joannes asportaretur de Epheso et in Patmos insula in exsilium mitteretur, in qua insula Apocalypsim quam ei Dominus revelavit manu sua conscripsit]. However, Domitian was killed by the Roman senate in the very same year in which he had ordered St John to be exiled.125

The remainder of the Passio concerns John’s return to Ephesus after Domitian’s death (where he was greeted by the people exclaiming ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord’), miracles performed there such as the raising of Drusiana, the drinking of a poisoned chalice and the crumbling of the temple of Artemis, and an account of John’s Metastasis.

Virtutes Johannis The Virtutes Johannis, also known as Pseudo-Abdias, are part of a larger collection of lives of the apostles, the Virtutes apostolorum, dated to the 6th or 7th century.126 Like the Passio, the text begins with an account of John’s banishment to Patmos, though it is more specific than the former. The opening chapter of the Virtutes describes the circumstances in Ephesus during Domitian’s reign which led to John being sent into exile. Balancing his brother James who was martyred by Herod, John appears before the proconsul in Ephesus, who orders him to deny Christ and to desist from preaching in the city. His response is that of Peter before the Sanhedrin: ‘We must obey God rather than humans’ (Acts 5:29; Obedire magis oportet deo quam hominibus). There then follows the boiling oil episode, which takes place in Ephesus rather than Rome, although the comparison between John and an athlete may be dependent on Jerome. John emerges miraculously unscathed, and it was only fear which prevented the proconsul from releasing him (Virt. Joh. I). In chapter 2, Patmos emerges as the island of exile. Although he uses the term in exilium duci, the author envisages a form of relegatio which unlike deportatio was not reserved to the emperor but could be imposed by local authorities. But the Virtutes say nothing of the circumstances under which John lived on Patmos. Instead, they immediately shift attention to the Apocalypse both seen and written on the island, prior to John’s restoration to Ephesus after Domitian’s death (Virt. Joh. II): Then he commanded him to be led into exile in the island which is called Pathmos [tunc praecepit eum in exilium duci in insulam quae dicitur Pathmos]. In that island he both saw and wrote the Apocalypse which is read in his name. 125 126

Pseudo-Miletus, ed. Migne 1857: 1241. Latin text in Junod and Kaestli 1983: II, 799–834.

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However, after Domitian’s death the senate ordered all his decrees to be rescinded. Among others, those who had been exiled by him returned to their homes. St John returned to Ephesus, where he had lodgings and many friends.127

CO NCLUSION A superficial reading of the early patristic reception of Patmos might suggest that it has vindicated the majority interests of modern commentators on Revelation. The primary interest would appear to be a literal-biographical one, rather than the more figurative and even allegorical interpretations of the Apocalypse more normally associated with patristic exegesis, and the dominant story recounted is one of Domitianic persecution and exile, as reflected in the recent scholarly appeal to patristic sources. However, a closer reading suggests a more complex story. On the one hand, there is significant variation in the details, whether the dating of John’s exile, its precise character, or the Roman official responsible (the proconsul of Asia, an unnamed ‘tyrant’, Domitian or Claudius). On the other, the readings encountered suggest an imaginative response to the gaps in the biblical narrative, as an integral part of the developing legends of John. Indeed, far from the Apocalypse being treated by these interpreters as a self-contained text, recounting its own story of what John saw in the heavenly realm, it becomes one moment in a much larger story. Moreover, several of the interpretations of the Domitianic exile type are also far more ‘engaged’ than ‘disinterested’ historical-critical parallels. In terms of the Kovacs-Rowland grid, they may be described as actualizations, whether by interpreters close to Roman persecution (e.g. Tertullian and possibly Victorinus), or, if Rosemary Arthur is correct about Pseudo-Dionysius, by those on the Monophysite fringes of early 6th-century Christianity. Thus the early popularity of what would become the received wisdom of modern Apocalypse commentators—that John arrives on Patmos as a persecuted exile—may tell us more about the circumstances of Revelation’s early interpreters than about John’s historical situation. But we have also discovered the beginnings of an alternative strand, sometimes interwoven with the former, which prioritizes the significance of Patmos as place of revelation. This second line of interpretation contains within it seeds for a more creative reading, whereby the boundary between actual and mythical geography is crossed, and Patmos becomes a sacred place detached from mundane reality, or symbolic of a particular pattern of Christian existence. 127

Junod and Kaestli 1983: II, 799–800.

3 Patmos in Early Medieval Latin Tradition (6th–10th Centuries) INTRODUCTION In the previous chapter, we traced the reception of Patmos in extant material from the early patristic period. Given the character of surviving sources, the focus was on locating Patmos within broader patterns of biographical and hagiographical Johannine traditions, a reflection of early Christian interest in the historia of the text as part of the wider history of salvation.1 Nevertheless, there were indications of more diverse possibilities than the consensus view of modern commentaries. This is reflected both in variations in details regarding John’s exile, and in a shift of focus on the part of some interpreters to Patmos as locus visionis. Moreover, it was proposed that the dominant interpretation of John as exile on Patmos may have been shaped by the particular circumstances of some of Revelation’s early readers, for whom persecution by imperial Rome was a reality or potential threat. This present chapter continues the story, by tracing how the raw material provided by early patristic forebears develops into clearer patterns of interpretation in the Latin West in the second half of the first Christian millennium. There is particular emphasis on the commentary tradition, given the wealth of surviving material from that genre during this period. It begins with a consideration of a cluster of 6th-century Latin commentators on the Apocalypse (Caesarius of Arles, Primasius, Apringius of Béja, and Cassiodorus), which illustrate the ongoing influence of Tyconian-Augustinian exegesis. Other influential commentaries discussed include those of the 8th-century exegetes Bede, Ambrose Autpert, and Beatus. The flowering of commentaries on Revelation in the 6th century (represented also by Oecumenius and Andreas of Caesarea in the Greek East) is, as Brian Daley notes, somewhat puzzling, given the relative calm of at least the

1

On this see, e.g. Mayeski 2009: 90–5.

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first half of that century. Although Daley describes a change to a darker mood from the 560s, precipitated by the end of Justinian’s reign, the spread of the bubonic plague and the Lombard invasion of Italy, these events post-date at least the commentaries of Caesarius, Primasius, and Apringius, and possibly also of Oecumenius.2 The terminus ad quem for the current chapter is the year 1000. All such chronological divisions are somewhat arbitrary, and this end-date is only partly related to increased eschatological fervour in the lead up to that year (which may not have held the universal significance often claimed by scholars).3 It also reflects the cultural shift, from the 11th century onwards, to what Mary Carruthers calls a ‘far more bookish culture’.4 But one might equally set the division in the 12th century, in recognition of the radical break with the Tyconian-Augustinian tradition represented by the Apocalypse interpretation of Joachim of Fiore (c.1135–1202).5 The decision to treat Eastern interpretations separately (in Chapter 5) reflects the independence of the Greek commentary tradition and other relevant texts such as the Prochorus Acts. There are also fewer Apocalypse commentaries in the Greek world, probably reflecting ongoing debates about Revelation’s canonical status. Of the 6th-century writings, Caesarius’s Expositio in Apocalypsin (dated variously to c.510–520 and c.540)6 has nothing specific to say about Patmos when commenting on Rev. 1.7 Most, however, derive some significance from John’s island location. Besides the expected focus on Patmos in the biography of John, several of these commentators give prominence to Patmos as place of revelation. This is often connected with the island’s physical separation from the rest of the world. Particular significance comes to be attached to Patmos as a place set apart, its marginal location from a terrestrial perspective allowing privileged access to heavenly mysteries. We also find attempts to explore the meaning of the island’s name, and the significance of its identification as ‘island’, resulting in some interesting allegorical readings.

2

Daley 2000: 39–42; see also Daley 1991: 210–11. McGinn 2000: 74. 4 Carruthers 2008: 153. 5 Wainwright 1993: 49–53; Rowland 2002: 160. 6 Caesarius, ed. Morin 1942: 210–89. These are a collection of sermons (Morin 1933; Gryson 1997: 317–22), or a commentary rather artificially divided into homilies (Steinhauser 1987: 51), which circulated for a long time under Augustine’s name. 7 On Caesarius’s ecclesial interpretation, exemplified in his treatment of the seven seals (Rev. 6:1–8:1), see Gumerlock 2009: 13–4. 3

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PATMOS AS PLACE OF EXILE The literal, biographical interpretation of Patmos, well established in the early patristic period, continues to influence commentators. The received tradition of Domitianic persecution and exile remains a dominant (albeit not exclusive) reading. However, particularly in the commentary genre, this exilic explanation is often combined with other interpretative possibilities at the literal level, or represents the springboard from which other levels of meaning are examined.

Primasius Primasius, bishop of Justiniapolis (Hadrumentum) in Numidia, North Africa, wrote his Apocalypse commentary in c.540.8 It is heavily dependent upon Tyconius and Augustine, particularly in its treatment of the millennium,9 and Victorinus-Jerome. Hence it treats the Apocalypse as ‘a text about the Church on earth’.10 Given his influence on so many successors, Primasius, as Ann Matter suggests, rather than Tyconius or Victorinus, should be regarded as the father of medieval Latin Apocalypse exegesis.11 Primasius shares the traditional linking of Patmos to John’s exile under Domitian, and follows Victorinus-Jerome in the tradition that John was condemned to the mines: However, at that time he deserved to see these things, when in the island of Pathmos, where he had been sent into exile and condemned to the mines for the sake of Christ by the emperor Domitian [quo in Pathmos insula pro Christo a Domitiano caesare exilio missus et metallo damnatus] . . .12

‘These things’ (haec) refers to the greatness of the revelation, appropriately revealed to one who rested on his breast at the Last Supper. This provides an indication of Primasius’s main and most illuminating focus (to be considered in the section on Primasius which follows) on the revelatory potential of Patmos, a line of interpretation which will be followed and developed by several of his successors.

8

It is mentioned in the Institutiones of Cassiodorus (480–575). Douglas Lumsden suggests that Primasius’s shift from millenarianism to focus on the Church’s mission in history is related to his support for Justinian: Lumsden 2001: 8. 10 Matter 1992: 44. 11 Matter 1992: 41. 12 Latin text in Primasius, ed. Adams 1985: 6. According to Bonner, the Migne edition of Primasius is based on ‘an apparently mutilated text’: Bonner 1966: 8. 9

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Apringius The association of Patmos with exile by imperial decree is also reiterated by Primasius’s contemporary Apringius. Apringius, Bishop of Pax Julia (now Béja) in Portugal,13 wrote his Apocalypse commentary in c.550 under the Visigoth king Theudis. He was strongly influenced by Victorinus-Jerome, but shows no direct awareness of Tyconius, to which fact Roger Gryson attributes Apringius’s originality among medieval commentators.14 Apringius’s commentary offers a strongly christological interpretation of the book.15 It is possible that it had its origin in homilies preached in the period between Easter and Pentecost, when the Apocalypse was appointed to be read in the Visigoth lectionary.16 His location in the Iberian Peninsula meant that the main influence of his Apocalypse commentary was on the Spanish exegete Beatus; he is not otherwise cited in medieval Latin commentaries.17 The relevant section on Patmos comprises lines 185–219 of the Liber Primus. Here Apringius knows the tradition about John’s exile (understood as imperial deportatio), which dates it to the reign of the Emperor Claudius (41–54 ce). This dating is known already to Epiphanius; Apringius, however, does not mention Epiphanius by name, but rather claims the authority of plural but unnamed ‘ecclesiastical writers’: The ecclesiastical writers have taught [Sicut relatores18 ecclesiastici docuerunt] that at the time of Claudius Caesar, when that famine which the prophet Agabus had announced in the Acts of the Apostles would come in ten years time was at its height, that during this difficulty this same Caesar, impelled by his usual vanity, had instituted persecution of the churches. It was during this time that he ordered John, the apostle of our Lord, Jesus Christ, to be transported into exile, and he was taken to the island of Patmos, and while there confirmed this writing [quem deportatum in Pathmos insula etiam praesens comprobat scriptura].19

The English translation given here is that of Weinrich in his Ancient Christian Commentary volume on Revelation. However, I have placed in italics the last phrase of Weinrich’s translation, which suggests a reference to the writing of the Apocalypse, or the confirmation of its contents in heavenly vision. More likely, (pace Weinrich) praesens comprobat scriptura should be translated ‘this 13

Apringius, ed. Férotin 1900: vi. Gryson (ed.) 2003: 7. For the text, see also Apringius, ed. Férotin 1900. 15 For dating, see Matter 1992: 42. Daley dates it to ‘shortly after 553’: Daley 2000: 41. 16 Matter 1992: 44. 17 Only one copy of this commentary now survives, owned by the University of Copenhagen (covering the first five and final three chapters of Revelation: Rev. 1:1–5:7; 18:6–19:21; 20:1–end), together with quotations in Beatus: Matter 1992: 44; Gryson 1997: 322–7. 18 Férotin’s edition, based on the Copenhagen manuscript, reads revelatores for relatores: Apringius, ed. Férotin 1900: 7. This reading is followed by Beatus in his commentary. 19 English translation from Weinrich 2005: 7; Latin text in Gryson (ed.) 2003: 39–40. 14

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present writing/scripture confirms’ or ‘demonstrates’: i.e. Apringius is making a claim that the deportation to Patmos by Domitian, or even John himself (quem deportatum, the object of comprobat), is ‘proved’ by the text (scriptura) of Rev. 1:9 on which he now comments. The remainder of Apringius’s commentary explores John’s tribulation, his presence on Patmos ‘on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus’, and the character of his visionary revelation. The 8th-century commentator Beatus will repeat Apringius’s Claudian dating for the Patmos exile.

Cassiodorus The other 6th-century Latin commentary is that of Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus (c.485–580), a senator from Ravenna, and founder of a monastery at Vivarium on his family estate.20 Towards the end of his life (c.575), he wrote a series of complexiones or brief explanations on books of the New Testament, including Revelation. Steinhauser describes the genre thus: . . . a summary of the contents of a biblical book, avoiding a detailed word for word exegesis but leading towards a brief statement of the author’s intention.21

The latter survives in only one manuscript (MS. XXXIX (37), Verona), copied in Italy c.600. It uses a biblical text which is ‘typiquement africain’,22 close to that commented on by Cassiodorus’s contemporary Primasius. Cassiodorus is primarily dependent on Jerome, though also Victorinus, Tyconius (of whom he writes, positively, that ‘Tyconius the Donatist commented on this book subtly and accurately’),23 Augustine and Primasius. Cassiodorus’s reference to Patmos, in his brief comments on Rev. 1:9, is predictable: John is exiled there by Domitian; he writes what he sees for the seven churches; his inaugural vision is described (Cap. III, lines 1–9): When he was on the island of Pathmos, auspiciously exiled by the decision of the emperor Domitian on account of the word of the Lord [a Domitiano principe propter uerbum domini in exilium feliciter destinatus], the Apostle said that, warned by a loud voice on the Lord’s Day, he heard that he should write down the things which he saw and mark them out for the seven churches, whose names stand written here.24

20

Gryson 1997: 331–3. Steinhauser 1987: 93. 22 Gryson (ed.) 2003: 106. 23 hunc librum Tychonius Donatista subtiliter et diligenter exposuit: Cassiodorus, ed. Migne 1865: 1382. 24 Latin text in Gryson (ed.) 2003: 113–14. 21

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Nevertheless, it contains one particularly striking feature: the adverb feliciter (‘auspiciously’, ‘happily’, or ‘favourably’) qualifying the reference to exile by Domitian. This suggests a shift away from imperial decree to divine will, in line with the principal aim of historia in medieval exegesis to articulate the ‘divinely initiated and providentially guided’ history of salvation.25 What might be understood as a misfortune related to imperial persecution is rather to be interpreted against the backdrop of Revelation as a whole, which is the unveiling of God’s plan for salvation. Cassiodorus is equally illuminating as witness to the use made of biblical commentaries, including those of the Apocalypse, in early medieval monastic communities. His Institutiones provide guidance for his monks in the practice of reading texts, both sacred and secular. In his preface to the first volume (De institutione divinarum litterarum), he likens the commentaries of the Fathers to Jacob’s ladder, which enable him and his brethren to ‘ascend’ to sacred Scripture (ascendamus ad divinam Scripturam). This first stage of commentary study gives way to a second, comprising ‘loud memorization of the text without looking at the written page’.26 But the goal for Cassiodorus is the third stage, ‘contemplation of the Lord’ (ut . . . ad contemplationem Domini efficaciter pervenire mereamur).27 In Cassiodorus’s schema, the Apocalypse plays a key role, as the appropriate conclusion to the annual cycle of biblical study. Indeed, its very content— John’s visionary encounter with God—signifies the goal of the monastic study of Scripture.28 This suggests a further dimension to Cassiodorus’s recalling for his monastic readers John’s ‘auspicious’ exile to Patmos: the possibility of Kovacs’s and Rowland’s second type of actualization (to see again what John himself saw).29 As Cassiodorus himself puts it, at the conclusion to the second book of his Institutiones: If anyone, burning with heavenly love and divested of earthly longings, truly desires to gaze upon heavenly virtues, let him read the Apocalypse of St John, and fixed in contemplation of it, he becomes acquainted with the Lord Christ [sancti Iohannis Apocalypsin legat, et in illa contemplatione defixus cognoscit Dominum Christum] . . .30

For the first stage, he recommends as guides to the mysteries of the Apocalypse the works of Jerome, Victorinus, Vigilius, Tyconius, Augustine, and Primasius, though he is also aware of Greek expositors less useful to his Latin-reading

25 26 27 28 29 30

Mayeski 2009: 93. Werckmeister 1980: 168. Liber Primus, Praefatio 2: Cassiodorus, ed. Mynors 1937: 4. Werckmeister 1980: 168. Kovacs and Rowland 2004: 9. Liber Secundus, Conclusio 4: Latin text in Cassiodorus, ed. Mynors 1937: 159.

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audience.31 His three-stage schema, and particularly his emphasis upon the goal of contemplation, will continue to be important for later monastic expositors. In the 8th century, the traditional linking of Patmos with Domitianic exile is also found in the Explanatio Apocalypsis of the Venerable Bede. It will be repeated by many subsequent interpreters, such as the 9th-century Haimo of Auxerre (d. c.855), who explicitly states in his Expositio in Apocalypsin that Domitian deported him ‘because of his unconquerable preaching of the Gospel’ (ob insuperabilem Evangelii praedicationem).32

PATMOS AS PLACE OF PRIVILEGED REVELATION The literal interpretation of Patmos in early medieval commentaries does not restrict itself to focus on John’s exile, as Cassiodorus’s feliciter suggests. A growing emphasis during this period is upon the visionary potential of John’s literal sojourn on Patmos, both in its own right and for the invitation this provides for exploring non-literal readings. As our first example shows, the two—the exilic and the visionary—are regularly combined in the same interpreter.

Primasius The primary emphasis in Primasius is upon Patmos as revelatory place. In his prologue to Rev. 1, he carefully prefaces his claim that Domitian sentenced John to the mines of Patmos by highlighting John’s privileged status among the disciples, as the beloved disciple who reclined on the Lord’s breast at the Last Supper (praesentia corporali super suum pectus faceret felici sorte discumbere), and drank spiritual mysteries from the fountain of life (de ipso uitae fonte spiritalia ueritatis arcana fluenter haurire).33 In other words, he is juxtaposing the two great Johannine texts—the Gospel and the Apocalypse— in order to connect the two revelations: the revelation at the Lord’s breast and the ‘revelation of Jesus Christ’ later given on Patmos, as if the latter enabled him to penetrate more deeply into what was received in Jerusalem. This connection between the insight given to John at the Last Supper and its 31

Liber Primus VIII: Cassiodorus, ed. Mynors 1937: 33–4. Haimo of Auxerre, ed. Migne 1852: 937. His work was previously attributed to Haymo of Halberstadt. 33 Capitula libri primi: Primasius, ed. Adams 1985: 6. 32

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explication in Revelation is frequently found in later Johannine tradition and devotion.34 In Primasius’s interpretation, the potential of the physical environment of Patmos comes to the fore, although not dependent upon precise knowledge of the island’s geography, topography, or location. If Steinhauser is correct about the contents of Tyconius’s commentary (a view called into question by Gryson’s critical edition),35 Primasius is drawing here on his predecessor’s interest in John’s penetration of heavenly mysteries (see above). However, he moves beyond Tyconius to draw a direct correlation between the physical constraints of the tiny island, by whose boundaries John was enclosed, and the expansive visionary world he was privileged to enter: Truly time and place are suitably made use of, that, where or when he is considered to be bounded by a human guard, there, transcending with his mind humanity’s boundaries, he should deserve to see divine things with unrestricted contemplation. And when it was denied him to move beyond fixed limits of the earth, he was allowed to penetrate the secrets of heaven [et cui tunc certa terrarum spatia negabantur excedere, secreta concederentur caelestia penetrare].36

In this extraordinary exposition of the passage, we have moved significantly away from Patmos as mere geographical location identifiable on a terrestrial map. Primasius’s interpretation exemplifies the phenomenon identified by Martha Himmelfarb in her analysis of 1 Enoch, whereby visionary texts represent the blurring of the boundary between real and mythic geography.37 Patmos is transformed from an identifiable Aegean island into the gateway linking the terrestrial with the celestial. It may not be illegitimate to interpret this as an allegorical reading of Patmos, in which the terrestrial location stands as a cipher for something else, or even specifically a tropological interpretation, concerned with the moral significance of a passage for the Christian interpreter.38 Through its physical remoteness, Patmos becomes a symbol for a particular kind of Christian life: separation from the world and its concerns. The terrestrial restrictions placed upon John by his island exile provide him unrestricted access to the celestial realm. Moreover, John’s explicit self-identification as frater vester et particeps offers the possibility that what he saw might also be open, through actualization, to others. This aspect will be repeated by the 8th-century commentators Bede and Ambrose Autpert, both dependent upon Primasius’s commentary.

34 35 36 37 38

E.g. Volfing 2001; Hamburger 2002. Steinhauser 1987: 261; Tyconius, ed. Gryson 2011. Latin text in Primasius, ed. Adams 1985: 6. Himmelfarb 1991. For such definitions, see e.g. Mayeski 2009: 92–3.

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Apringius Apparently independently of Primasius, Apringius also presents Patmos as the liminal place which allows John access ‘in spirit’ to heaven: He says that he was removed [tultum] in the Spirit, that is, raised to God’s secret places [id est in secretis dei eleuatum], that he might see the things which are to be spoken; he does not say that he entered the heights of heaven in the body, but that he was admitted in the Spirit, mindful of this word: No-one has ascended into heaven, except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven.39

There are several variant readings to the opening word tultum (= sublatum, from tollere), listed by Gryson in his critical edition: ductum (‘led’), totum (‘entirely’), translatum (‘transferred’), and stultum (‘foolish’).40 The latter reading is found in the edition of Férotin, who suggests that it should be read as exaltatum (‘elevated’).41 The overall sense of the passage, however, is clear: it describes John’s heavenly ascent from Patmos ‘in the spirit’ (Rev. 1:10; cf. 4:1).42

Bede The 8th-century43 Expositio Apocalypseos of the Venerable Bede (673–735) further explores the role of Patmos as gateway to heavenly mysteries.44 Bede is particularly dependent upon Primasius and Tyconius-Augustine, whilst also influenced by Victorinus-Jerome and Gregory the Great.45 The TyconianAugustinian influence manifests itself in Bede’s ecclesial reading of the Apocalypse, as a vision of the trials and labours of the Church. In his accompanying letter to the monk Hwaetbert (Eusebius), Bede sets out his seven-part division of the Apocalypse, and explicitly utilizes Tyconius’s seven rules. Besides his named written sources, Bede’s Apocalypse interpretation would almost certainly have been influenced by the set of Apocalypse paintings 39

Latin text in Gryson (ed.) 2003: 39. The quotation is from John 3:13. Gryson (ed.) 2003: 39. 41 Apringius, ed. Férotin 1900: 7. 42 Apringius’s interest in the nature of John’s visionary experience is shared by PseudoJerome, who distinguishes three types of vision: carnalis, spiritalis, and intellectualis, John’s Patmos experience being of the third kind: Gryson (ed.) 2003: 195. 43 Scholars disagree as to its precise dating. Marshall dates it to c.710–716 (Bede 1878: iv), while Wainwright prefers an earlier date between 703 and 709 (Wainwright 1993: 40). Similarly Gryson, who regards it as one of the first of his exegetical works: ‘il est donc vraisemblablement antérieur à 710’: Gryson 1997: 484. 44 Bede, ed. Gryson 2001; also Bede, ed. Migne 1850: 129–206. For a description, see Gryson 1997: 484–9; see also Bonner 1966; Mackay 1997. 45 Bede 1878: iv. 40

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brought back from Rome by Benedict Biscop c.685, and placed on the north wall of the Church of St Peter, Wearmouth.46 Bede himself refers to these in his Vitae abbatum, though unfortunately does not describe their content except that they presented to the viewer the ‘perils of the last judgment’ (extremi discrimen examinis).47 They must have been a substantial cycle, to cover the wall space in the nave and match the Gospel series on the south wall.48 Some art historians believe this Northumbrian prototype to be preserved in two 9th-century illuminated manuscripts in Valenciennes and Paris (Valenciennes, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 99; Paris BNF nouv. Acq. Lat. 1132).49 Finally, we should not underestimate Bede’s monastic context for his biblical exegesis, including the Apocalypse commentary: ‘the pages of his commentaries are full of profoundly personal meditation on the Scriptures, formed both directly from reading the Fathers but even more by the constant immersion of his mind in the daily Office . . .’50 In the standard manuscripts, Bede’s commentary is prefaced by an Epigram on the Blessed John and his Apocalypse (Exsul ab humano). Steinhauser raises the possibility that this poem might be by Alcuin of Tours rather than Bede himself.51 If not by Bede, it is certainly in accord with the substance of Bede’s commentary. Its author makes the connection between the physical limitations of Patmos as place of exile, and the transcending of boundaries in his heavenly visions: An exile [exsul] from the busy haunts of men, Forbidden now to see his country’s soil, He, loved of God, to heaven triumphant soars, And joins the choir around the high-throned King.52

This theme is developed further in the commentary proper. Bede’s comments on Rev. 1:9 unsurprisingly take as their starting point the tradition about John being exiled by Domitian ‘on account of the Gospel’ (propter evangelium). Bede is clearly using Primasius as his source at this point, viewing John’s physical restriction on Patmos, denying him access to other places on earth, as the context which allowed him to penetrate the ‘secrets of heaven’:53 46

van der Meer 1978: 40. Bede, Vitae quinque ss. Abbatum, liber 1: Bede, ed. Migne 1862: 717–18; English translation from Bede 1910: 349–66. 48 Willoughby 1940: 133–4. 49 See Alexander 1978. I have not been able to consult either manuscript; unfortunately, none of the illustrations printed in von Juraschek 1954 depict Patmos. 50 Ward 1998: 44; see also Mary Carruthers on monastic ‘rumination’: Carruthers 1998. 51 Steinhauser 1987: 358, n. 224. It is found attached to manuscripts of Alcuin’s commentary. 52 English translation from Bede 1878: 10; Latin text in Bede, ed. Gryson 2001: 218. 53 Primasius, ed. Adams 1985: 6: et cui tunc certa terrarum spatia negabantur excedere, secreta concederentur caelestia penetrare. 47

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It is a well-known story that John was banished [religatum] to this island by the Emperor Domitian for the Gospel’s sake, and it was fitly given him to penetrate the secrets of heaven, at a time when it was denied him to go beyond a certain spot on earth [cui tunc congrue secreta datum est caeli penetrare, cum certa terrarum spatia negabatur excedere].54

The appropriateness of this geographical location for penetrating divine mysteries is matched in Bede’s comment on Rev. 1:10 regarding the temporal setting. ‘The Lord’s day’ is an appropriate time for receiving visions (congruum quoque spiritali uisioni tempus indicat). Although Patmos in Bede’s reading remains a geographical location on earth, he emphasizes its role as a point of entry into a higher world. A second relevant passage is Bede’s commentary on Rev. 10:8 (‘And the voice which I had heard spoke again to me from heaven and said, “Go, take the open book from the hand of the angel”’): When the Lord lays open the mysteries of future time, and says, ‘For the kingdom of heaven is at hand,’ the Church also is admonished to receive the same book of preaching. But these words may also be suitable to John himself, who is to return to preaching after his banishment [quamuis et eidem Iohanni possint haec dicta congruere post exilium ad praedicandum reuersuro].55

In typically Tyconian fashion (here utilizing Tyconius’s fourth rule De specie et genere, ‘Concerning the Species and Genus’), the specific circumstances of John on Patmos are secondary to an ecclesial reading whereby Christians in every age are called to devour the book and proclaim its message afresh. John is a particular example of the general vocation of the Church. The ecclesial dimension is further confirmed by Bede’s comment on Rev. 16:20 (et omnis insula fugit, et montes non sunt inventi), where both islands and mountains, including presumably John’s insula of Patmos, are interpreted as figures of the Church: The Church, which from the height of its stability is compared with islands and mountains [quae propter stabilitatis eminentiam insulis conparatur ac montibus], prudently hides itself from the waves of the persecutors.56

Bede also wrote a sermon for the Feast of St John the Evangelist (on the Gospel for the Feast, John 21:19–24), which was to become an important source for later liturgical and hagiographical developments.57 Here he speaks (following Primasius) of the ‘hidden mysteries’ of Christ’s divine nature which John was privileged to imbibe from Christ’s breast at the Last Supper, and understands

54 55 56 57

English translation from Bede 1878: 13; Latin text in Bede, ed. Gryson 2001: 241. English translation from Bede 1878: 70; Latin text in Bede, ed. Gryson 2001: 2. English translation from Bede 1878: 116; Latin text in Bede, ed. Gryson 2001: 463. See e.g. Volfing 2001.

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Christ’s words about the beloved disciple remaining ‘until I come’ to refer to his ending his days in peace and not martyrdom (unlike Peter, the third character in this gospel passage), despite distress and persecution. In this context, Bede draws upon Jerome to describe the trials that John did undergo: his scourging in Jerusalem (Acts 5:41), his being immersed in boiling oil at the instigation of Domitian, and his relegation to Patmos (Bede, Homily I. 9): And it is told in church history how he was put by the emperor Domitian into a tub of boiling oil, from which, since divine grace shielded him, he came out untouched, just as he had been a stranger to the corruption of fleshly concupiscence. And not much after, on account of his unconquerable constancy in bringing the good news, he was banished in exile by the same prince to the island of Patmos, where although he was deprived of human comfort, he nevertheless merited to be relieved by the frequent consolation of the divine vision and spoken message [Nec multo post ab eodem principe propter insuperabilem euangelizandi constantiam in Phatmos insulam exilio religatur ubi humano licet destitutus solatio diuinae tamen uisionis et allocutionis meruit crebra consolatione releuari]. Accordingly, in that very place he composed with his own hand the Apocalypse, which the Lord revealed to him concerning the present and future state of the Church.58

This last phrase echoes Bede’s letter to Eusebius prefacing his Apocalypse commentary, which interprets the whole book as one in which ‘God saw fit to reveal, in words and figures, the internal battles and conflagrations of his Church’ (in qua bella et incendia intestina ecclesiae suae deus uerbis figurisque reuelare dignatus est).59 The moral Bede draws for his monastic audience from this story of Peter and John is that the two apostles symbolize two patterns of the Christian life, the active and the contemplative respectively, the latter type commencing in this life but being perfected after death. It is an interpretation found already in Augustine (Tract. In Ioh. 1.24), but Bede’s incorporation of the consolation of John’s Patmos vision into his contemplative vocation augments the potential of Patmos to be understood as a symbol of the monastic life.

Ambrose Autpert Ambrose Autpert (d.784), originating from Provence, was a monk in Samnium, Italy. He wrote his commentary c.758–767,60 providing what Matter calls ‘an exhaustive spiritual reading of the Apocalypse for future 58 59 60

English translation from Bede 1991: 89–90; Latin text in Bede, ed. Hurst 1955: 63–4. Latin text in Bede, ed. Gryson 2001: 221. Ambrose Autpert, ed. Weber 1975; see also Gryson 1997: 489–91.

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generations’.61 Autpert shows dependence on Jerome-Victorinus, Tyconius, Bede, and particularly Primasius. Thus it is not surprising to find him repeating the link found already in Primasius and Bede, between the geographical limitations of terrestrial Patmos and John’s capacity to see into heaven. In his preface to his Expositio in Apocalypsin, Autpert expands on the commentary of Primasius in the following way (words from the Primasian source are italicized): Where did he deserve to see such great things? In the cities? In kings’ palaces? In sublime places? No, but in the island of Patmos, relegated by Domitian, banished in exile, condemned to the mines. But he remained at a great height, in great constancy of mind; he who, when he is considered bounded by a human guard, there, transcending with his mind humanity’s boundaries, should deserve to see divine things with unrestricted contemplation. And when it was denied him to move beyond fixed limits of the earth, he was allowed to penetrate the secrets of heaven.62

Autpert develops this theme in an interesting way, through a series of rhetorical questions. The privileged location for receiving divine mysteries was not in cities, or royal palaces, or lofty places (Numquid in urbibus? Numquid in regum aedibus? Numquid in locis sublimibus?). Rather, it was the isolated island of exile, a place of punishment and hard labour. Such an emphasis will be developed more fully throughout Autpert’s commentary, which extolls the virtues of the contemplative life.63 John the exile of Patmos functions as a type of the monastic, who also sees into heaven.

Beatus The Spanish Apocalypse commentary of Beatus of Liébana, dated to the latter part of the 8th century,64 has little to add to previous comments on Patmos. His Apocalypse commentary is a vast twelve-volume work,65 which is largely derivative from his predecessors.66 Steinhauser calls him a ‘tireless compiler and polemicist’ rather than a ‘subtle or deep thinker’.67 61

Matter 1992: 47. Latin text in Ambrose Autpert, ed. Weber 1975: 9, lines 160–70. 63 Lumsden 2001: 8. 64 Steinhauser dates the commentary to 776, though with two subsequent redactions before Beatus’s death (Steinhauser 1987: 142–4). Sanders, building on L. Delisle, dates the first revision to 784, and the second to 786; a further edition was produced after his death in 798 (Beatus, ed. Sanders 1930: xii–xviii). 65 Beatus, ed. Sanders 1930; Beatus, ed. Pose 1985; see also Gryson 1997: 491–502. 66 In his preface, Beatus explicitly expresses indebtedness to Jerome (Victorinus-Jerome), Augustine, Ambrose, Fulgentius, Gregory the Great, Tyconius, Irenaeus, Apringius, and Isidore; he also uses Primasius. His commentary is an important source for reconstructing that of Tyconius. See Beatus, ed. Sanders 1930: 1–2. 67 Steinhauser 1987: 143. 62

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Beatus opens by citing an existing preface to the Apocalypse, commonly found in Vulgate manuscripts and attributed to Jerome, although the section Beatus quotes comes from the so-called Monarchian Prologue attributed to Priscillian.68 This alludes to the tradition of John’s virginity, and reiterates the parallel between the opening (incorruptibile principium) of the biblical canon with Genesis and its conclusion in John’s Apocalypse (incorruptibilis finis per virginem), sowing seeds for a potential reading of the latter as a restoration of paradise. Similarly, his commentary on Rev. 1:9 is equally derivative, following Autpert in dating the Patmos exile to the reign of Claudius, and repeating Primasius’s contrast between the physical constraints of Patmos and the unrestricted access to John’s apocalyptic world (Beatus 1. 3, 17–23, and 37).

Haimo of Auxerre Haimo of Auxerre, in the preface to his Expositio in Apocalypsin (written c.840), exploits the tradition of John’s harsh labour in the mines of Patmos to accentuate the Primasian emphasis on Patmos as gateway to celestial mysteries. The intention of the imperial decree was that he might dig the ‘secrets of marble’, or the earth (ut ibi forsitan secreta marmorum, vel terram foderet); instead, he is allowed to transcend this harsh situation in order to penetrate heavenly mysteries (secreta coelestia).69 Nor, in Haimo’s interpretation, is this privilege reserved for John alone. The revelation of heavenly secrets is open to everyone who undergoes suffering for preaching the divinity and humanity of the Son of God: talibus secreta coelestia revelabuntur.70 This treatment of John on Patmos as a moral example for contemporary generations reflects the Carolingian context of Haimo’s Apocalypse interpretation, which regards the book as an allegory of the church.71

De Enigmatibus ex Apocalypsi Iohannis A related comment is found in a medieval text which discusses some of the mysteries of Revelation, De Enigmatibus ex Apocalypsi Iohannis (‘Concerning the Riddles of John’s Apocalypse’), attested in manuscripts as early as the 9th century.72 In this particular case, Patmos—or rather Phatmos—is mentioned to solve an apparent discrepancy among the Fathers. The author notes the 68 69 70 71 72

Steinhauser 1987: 148 (citing Chapman 1908: 256–8). Haimo of Auxerre, ed. Migne 1852: 937. Haimo of Auxerre, ed. Migne 1852: 950. Matter 1992: 49. Published in Gryson (ed.) 2003: 243–95.

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claim of Origen and Jerome that John wrote the Gospel first and then the Apocalypse, and the reverse order found in Gregory and Isidore. The solution presented emphasizes Patmos’s role as place of revelation, where the Apocalypse was written in John’s heart before it was ever consigned to writing (De Enigm. 1): I.e. the Apocalypse: it was revealed to him first on the island of Phatmos [reuelata est ei primitus in insola Phatmos], that is, he wrote it in his heart [hoc est scripsit in corde eius]. Afterwards, at the request of the brethren in Asia he wrote the Gospel, and afterwards he wrote the Apocalypse.73

The same passage suggests a correlation between the extent of John’s distance from humans and his closeness to God: John wrote this book, when the Emperor Domitian exiled him [eiecit illum] to the island of Phatmos, whereby the further he was from humans, the closer he was to God [ut quantum longior fuit ab hominibus, tantum propior fuit deo], and the more he was forbidden to preach and speak to others, the more he uttered the word about God: In the beginning was the Word, etc.

ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATIONS OF PATMOS Several of the interpreters mentioned so far have recognized the non-literal potential of Patmos and the narrative of John’s exile and vision on the island. Patmos has been treated as a figure for a life of solitude, and ecclesial readings of the passage have emerged, exploiting the potential inherent in John’s claim to be sharing with fellow-Christians in the tribulation. Perhaps most interesting, however, is the emergence of a line of interpretation which offers a clearly allegorical reading (in the Kovacs-Rowland sense of ‘decoding’) of the name ‘Patmos.’ This exploits a hermeneutical strategy already present within the text of the Apocalypse (e.g. Rev. 11:8), whereby certain place-names are interpreted in a non-literal sense.

Patmos as Fretum The earliest surviving manuscript of Primasius’s commentary, the 7th- or 8thcentury Bodleianus (manuscript D),74 contains what is possibly the earliest allegorical interpretation of the name Patmos, which will be regularly repeated 73

Latin text in Gryson (ed.) 2003: 243. Codex Bodleianus, MS. Douce 140 [21714], lines 105–7. For dating, see Primasius, ed. Adams 1985: xii-xvi; Bonner 1966: 8. 74

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in subsequent medieval commentaries. Bodleianus offers the following as an addition to Primasius’s commentary on Rev. 1:9. Given its ambiguities, I cite the Latin original first, and will then propose a possible translation in the light of further discussion: quod interpretatur fretum: ad morem ergo insulae, latratu fluctuum circumactus et persecutionum procellis impulsus, probari potuit non moueri.75

It remains uncertain whether this passage is authentically Primasian, or represents a later interpolation into Primasius’s text. Bodleianus contains a number of other passages which are also absent from other surviving manuscripts of Primasius’s commentary.76 This interpretation is, however, unambiguously attested in the 8th century by Primasius’s successor Ambrose Autpert, by Haimo of Auxerre in the ninth, and was popularized in the later Middle Ages by its inclusion in the Glossa ordinaria. The primary meaning of the Latin fretum is ‘strait’, ‘sound’ (in the marine sense), or ‘channel’, a more appropriate description of the waters around Patmos than the island itself. But the association of images established between the island of Patmos and the ‘strait’ or ‘channel’ (fretum) of water which surrounds it can lead to further associations of the word. As well as its primary meaning as ‘strait’, fretum can also be translated ‘raging’, ‘swelling’, or even ‘violence’. This range of meaning almost invites a multiple English translation of fretum, along the following lines: [Patmos,] which is interpreted ‘strait’ or ‘raging’: in the manner, therefore, of an island, pushed about by the barking of the waves and driven by the tempests of persecutions, it is able to be tested but not to be moved.

This double aspect might be implied by the juxtaposition of latratu fluctuum circumactus and persecutionum procellis impulsus. An island, despite the raging of the waters and other such ‘persecutions’, is not to be moved. Patmos—and presumably its occupant John, unaffected by the persecutions of Domitian—represents the Christian unaffected by the ‘raging’ of the world. The precise moves which led an interpreter from Patmos to fretum are not immediately apparent. An etymological explanation cannot be ruled out, given the importance of etymology for medieval exegetes in establishing the literal sense.77 One possibility is that links were first made between the name Patmos and the Greek word of ‘river’ ( Æ), then translated into Latin, although flumen might be a more obvious choice. Given the common reading Phatmos in Latin Apocalypse commentaries, another solution might be to trace an etymological link between the consonants of the two words: Phtms (or Ftms) and Frtm. However, neither of these solutions is particularly straightforward. 75 76

Primasius, ed. Adams 1985: 12. Primasius, ed. Adams 1985: xv.

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Mayeski 2009: 93.

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More promising is the avenue opened up by gematria, an exegetical method for identifying the significance of names invited by Rev. 13:18. In contrast with the usual scholarly interpretation of 666 (or 616) as the number of Nero Caesar, neither the Greek or Hebrew methods provide a connection between Patmos (or Phatmos) and fretum. Rather, the solution is to be found via the Latin alphabet. Even this is not straightforward, given that several different gematrial systems are attested, including one which works only with those limited letters of the alphabet used for the Roman numerical system (I, V, X, L, C, D, and M). This system tends to dominate, for example, in Latin solutions to the identification of 666.78 However, one simpler system works through the Latin alphabet assigning to each letter an ascending numerical value from A to Z (unlike the Greek and Hebrew systems, which work from 1–10, then 20, 30, 40, etc.), and treating I and J, and U and V, as equivalent.79 According to this system, Patmos and fretum share the same numerical value of 79: PATMOS = 15 + 1 + 19 + 12 + 14 + 18 = 79 FRETUM = 6 + 17 + 5 + 19 + 20 + 12 = 79 Having established a gematrial link between them, however, we should not rule out another dimension at work in ensuring the successful juxtaposition of two words which have a common connection in water or sea (Patmos island and a ‘strait’ or ‘whirlpool’). Mary Carruthers has alerted attention to the sophisticated and structured patterns of medieval monastic memoria, whereby obscurities in the text could sometimes be more heuristic than hermeneutical, serving as devices for retaining and recollecting learned material.80 Whatever the precise process by which Patmos and fretum were first brought together, this interpretation is further explicated by Ambrose Autpert,81 followed by Alcuin of Tours.82 Both offer an ecclesial reading of Rev. 1:9 (drawing upon Tyconius’s rule De specie et genere), reflecting the widespread interpretation of the Apocalypse as an allegory of the Church.83 Thus, John speaks in particular (specialiter) of his own person, and in general (generaliter) of the person of the Church. The regnum of which John speaks pertains to Christ, the head, tribulatio to his members, and patientia to both. Similarly, both use the interpretation of Patmos as fretum (or fretus in Alcuin) to highlight the correspondence between the persecutions and difficulties

78

E.g. Brady 1983. Eisenberg 2007: 105. 80 Carruthers 2008: 132. 81 Ambrose Autpert, ed. Weber 1975: 56–8. 82 Alcuin, ed. Migne 1863: 1095. Several scholars have questioned the attribution to Alcuin: Gumerlock 2003: 18. 83 A feature also of the Carolingian commentary of Haimo of Auxerre, and an anonymous 9th-century Frankish commentary: see Matter 1992: 48–9. 79

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endured by both John and the Christian community throughout the ages. Autpert reads thus: What does he indicate by the ‘island of Patmos’ (which is interpreted ‘strait’ or ‘raging’ [quae fretum interpretata sonat], in which John had been exiled when he discerned this revelation), except the difficulties [angustias] of persecutions, which he now suffered, and the Church, whose figure he himself bore, afterwards endured? But whether he should be condemned to the mines—or she [the Church] be surrounded by the waves of tribulations—he may not be allowed to travel to this or that place [huc illucque egredi non permittatur], but inhabiting heaven, he can gaze upon divine mysteries.84

The word angustiae, like fretum, has the dual meaning of ‘strait (of water)’ and ‘narrowness’ or ‘difficulties’, allowing a similar juxtaposition of geographical location and ecclesial persecution.85

Patmos as Insula A closely-connected allegorical interpretation of the word insula is also offered in some medieval texts. It was proposed back in Chapter 1 than John’s explicit identification of Patmos as an ‘island’ might have more than geographical significance. That at least some medieval exegetes considered this possibility is reflected in an allegorical interpretation of the word ‘island’ (insula). This reading is found, for example, in the anonymous commentary known as Pseudo-Jerome (published in Gryson’s edition under the heading Incerti auctoris commemoratorium de Apocalypsi Johannis Apostoli),86 PseudoJerome is a text of probable Irish origin, and dated by Gryson to the second half of the 7th century.87 The comment on Rev. 1:9 reads as follows: THE ISLAND, which the sea surrounds, signifies tribulation [INSVLA, quod mare circumdat, tribulationem significat].88

The same interpretation is found in the Commemoratorium de Apocalypsi Johannis attributed to Theodulph of Orleans (760–821).89 84

Latin text in Ambrose Autpert, ed. Weber 1975: 58. Smith and Lockwood 1976: 46. 86 A commemoratorium is not a commentary as such, but rather an aide-mémoire or reading guide, recalling, often by a word, the symbolic sense of the succeeding images in the text: Gryson (ed.) 2003: 161. 87 McNamara (ed.) 1976: 143; Gryson 1997: 333–7; Gryson (ed.) 2003: 161, 182; Turner 2005: 78–9; see Steinhauser 1987: 103–6 for the view that it was produced by a monk of Cassiodorus’s monastery of Vivarium. For the text, see Hartung (ed.) 1904; LoMenzo Rapisarda (ed.) 1966; Gryson (ed.) 2003: 195–229. 88 Latin text in Gryson (ed.) 2003: 199. 89 Gryson (ed.) 2003: 306. 85

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CONCLUSIO N In this early medieval period, interpretations of Patmos traced to the first five centuries continue to be present, though the shift away from biographical sources led to other possibilities being explored. Literal readings which locate Patmos within John’s biography, normally as a result of official persecution or imperial decree, are found. However, a number of commentators prioritize the visionary character of John’s experience, in which Patmos becomes the necessary context of separation from John’s ordinary world for entry into an alternative, visionary world. The connection, so important for later devotion to St John, between the mysteries he heard on the Lord’s breast at the Last Supper and those revealed on Patmos, is here established. Finally, we find the first allegorical readings, which explore the wider potential of the name Patmos and the Latin term insula. Some of these examples might be better described as ecclesial, in that they present John’s experience as a type of the ongoing experience of the Church.

4 Patmos in Later Medieval Latin Tradition (1000–1516) I N T R O D U C TI O N The period from the close of the first Christian millennium to the eve of the Reformation (1000–1516) witnesses some of the most creative exegesis of the Apocalypse. As well as a continuation of Tyconian-Augustinian exegesis (which read Revelation as a visionary account of the life of the Church), the interpretation of Joachim of Fiore offered a new and influential reading which, for all its complexity, paid renewed attention to history, and which was to provide the raw materials for bold successors such as the Franciscan Peter John Olivi. We also find more clearly linear-prophetic readings, such as that of Alexander Minorita (Alexander of Bremen), followed by Nicholas of Lyra, which eschewed Joachim’s recapitulative approach to treat the whole text as an unfolding prophecy of stages of church history to the last judgement.1 In this period, interpretations of Patmos both reinforce and develop established interpretations, and explore further possibilities. Therefore, although chronological sequence continues to provide an overall shape to the account given in this chapter, not least to highlight probable genealogical relationships between interpreters, increasing priority will be given to different patterns of exegesis as an organizational principle.2 Some selectivity has also been necessary, given that there is far more extant material than from earlier periods. The priority has been to include examples of each type of interpretation discovered, and to discuss the most significant exemplars. Before proceeding, it is worth repeating the caveat expressed above that any account of a text’s reception history may be describing only the small tip of a 1 On Apocalypse interpretation in this period: McGinn 1979; Burr 1992; Daniel 1992; Lerner 1992; Wainwright 1993: 49–61; McGinn 2000; Rowland 2002: 160; Kovacs and Rowland 2004: 17–19. 2 Although bearing in mind that, with more sophisticated appreciation of the different senses of Scripture, the same medieval interpreter was able to hold together more than one kind of interpretation: see de Lubac 1998–2009.

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very large iceberg. While this applies to the whole story, it is especially the case with this period, given the difficulty of access to some commentaries, found only in manuscript form in libraries across continental Europe.3 The current chapter, therefore, makes no claim to be exhaustive. Certainly interest continues to be expressed during this period in Patmos as a location in John’s wider biography, whether as place of exile or of heavenly vision. Yet late medieval commentators are rarely interested in Patmos for purely biographical reasons, moving beyond the literal sense to consider various aspects of the spiritual sense, especially the allegorical and tropological or moral.4 Some stress the appropriateness of John’s physical location for divine revelation, exploring its implications for contemporary Christian contemplation. For others, there is an ongoing ecclesial dimension to John’s tribulations and exile, while still others regard the similarities between John’s circumstances and their own as evidence for the eschatological significance of their time. The figurative interpretation of Patmos as fretum, already encountered in earlier commentators, is widely attested in this period and developed in interesting ways. One particular expansion of this presents Patmos as an allegory of the monastic life. Finally, some commentators exploit the potential of Rev. 10, in which John devours the ‘little scroll’ while apparently still on Patmos, for considering the relationship between the Patmos episode and the commission to ‘prophesy again’ (Rev. 10:11).

PATMOS AS PLACE IN THE BIOGRAPHY OF JOHN Interest in Patmos as a location in the wider biography of John continues to feature in many interpretations, even if it ceases to play the central role it did in earlier commentators. Instead, this literal interpretation often provides the springboard for non-literal readings. Richard of St Victor, who reworked the Glossa ordinaria into an Apocalypse commentary c.1150,5 locates John’s exile to Patmos in a sequence which describes John’s preaching in his appointed territory of Asia, and his relegatio by Domitian following the boiling oil episode. He even locates Patmos geographically, ‘in the Syrian Sea’ (in mari Syrico).6 This is a surprising designation, in the light of evidence that some medieval travellers divided the Mediterranean according to neighbouring territories, including mare syricum,

3 4 5 6

See Turner 2005: 7. On this see especially de Lubac 1998–2009: II, 83–226. Lerner 1992: 55–6. Prologus Alter: Richard of St Victor, ed. Migne 1855: 684.

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mare asiaticum, and mare hybericum.7 Richard’s preference for the first suggests that he locates Patmos not in the Aegean (for which mare asiaticum would be a better description), but in the far eastern Mediterranean. This echoes some Ethiopian traditions, which identify Patmos as an island close to Antioch (see the Commentaries section in Chapter 5). For Richard, the Apocalypse is written as a response to the vices which sprang up among the churches of Asia in John’s absence; i.e. on the literal level primarily addressed to these 1st-century congregations. Nevertheless, he is swift to draw wider ecclesial significance from John’s vision: it is concerned, not simply with the Asian churches of John’s day, but with the present and future state of the universal church (de praesenti ac futuro statu Ecclesiae universalis).8 By praesens, it is probable that Richard means not John’s present but his own, reflecting the moral-ecclesial dimension of Tyconian-Augustinian exegesis.9 For all the novelty of the Apocalypse interpretation of Joachim of Fiore (c.1135–1202), his starting-point too is a biographical one. In the Epistola Prologalis to his Expositio, he speaks of the ‘Apocalypse which blessed John transcribed when exiled on the island of Pathmos’ (Apocalypsim quã beatus Joãnes in pathmos ĩsula religatus descripsit).10 The Franciscan Nicholas of Lyra (1270–1349) comments on Rev. 1:9 in a similar vein. His important commentary, part of his ambitious Postilla Litteralis to the whole Bible, was published in 1329. It circulated widely after 1498 due to the fact that it was regularly printed alongside the Glossa ordinaria in copies of the Vulgate.11 Nicholas’s athletic metaphor for John’s ‘trial’ in the boiling oil may be derived from Jerome, or from the Virtutes Johannis: I was on the island called Patmos He emerged from the vat of boiling oil unscorched as a strong athlete, and anointed, he was sent into exile to the island of Patmos [ad insulam pathmos fuit in exilium relegatus] where he wrote the Apocalypse that the Lord revealed; thus he describes the place. Because of the word of God Here he explains the cause of his exile—because he chose neither to deny Christ, nor to cease preaching in his name, he was sent into exile.12

We have no indication here of that ‘linear prophetic’ interpretation of the Apocalypse, probably derived from Alexander Minorita, which is apparent elsewhere in Nicholas’s commentary.13 7

Pastré 2002: 86. Richard of St Victor, ed. Migne 1855: 685. 9 On the influence of Augustine on Richard and others: Wainwright 1993: 41. 10 Joachim of Fiore 1527: 2r. 11 Krey 1995: 186–7. Nicholas produced a second edition in 1329, working with the commentaries of the earlier Franciscan Alexander Minorita, and Nicholas’s contemporary Peter Aureol. 12 English translation from Nicholas of Lyra 1997: 36 (bold type in original); Latin text in Nicholas of Lyra 1480, on Rev. 1:9. On Nicholas’s successors, see Krey 1995. 13 Nicholas of Lyra 1997: 12. On Nicholas’s Apocalypse interpretation, see Krey 2000, who shows that Nicholas was less interested than some of his predecessors and contemporaries in the 8

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One common trait among commentators on Rev. 1:9, following the 12thcentury Glossa ordinaria, is their interest in four features of a literal reading of the passage: the persona (John), locus (Patmos), causa (‘on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus’), and tempus (the Lord’s Day).14 Not only is this adopted in Richard of St Victor’s expansion of the Glossa.15 It is also found in various forms in early Dominican commentaries such as Vidit Iacob (c.1240–1244), and in the anonymous Lollard Commentary Opus Arduum,16 written from prison between Christmas 1389 and Easter 1390, and published in an abridged form by Luther in 1528.17 Outside the commentary tradition, texts such as the Golden Legend (Legenda Aurea), which circulated widely throughout the Middle Ages and influenced artistic, hagiographical, and liturgical traditions, continued to keep alive the memory of Patmos in the biography of John. The Golden Legend was compiled c.1260 by the Dominican Jacobus de Voragine, who was largely dependent for his legends about John on the Passio Iohannis or PseudoMelito,18 and its summary in Isidore’s De ortu et obitu patrum. It describes Domitian’s summoning of John to Rome, the boiling oil incident by the Latin Gate, and John’s exile to Patmos to prevent him from preaching the gospel. Significant is the claim that John lived alone on Patmos, an almost universal characteristic of the Western (though not the Eastern) artistic tradition: The emperor Domitian, hearing of his fame, summoned him to Rome and had him plunged into a caldron of boiling oil outside the gate called the Porta Latina; but the blessed John came out untouched, just as he had avoided the corruption of the flesh. Seeing that his treatment had not deterred him from preaching, the emperor exiled [relegavit] him to the island of Patmos, where, living alone, he wrote the Apocalypse, the Book of Revelation [ubi solus degens apocalypsim scripsit].19

There is also interest in the geographical location of Patmos in medieval travel accounts. Some attest to pilgrimage to the island, although such accounts are relatively rare and tend to lack details. Part of an explanation may be that imminent coming of Antichrist, with his outline of church history up to his day only taking the reader to Rev. 17. 14 On the glossa, see Smalley 1983: 46–52, 56–66; Gibson 1990; Ocker 2009: 259. Although Anselm of Laon (d.1117) was the key figure in the compilation of the Glossa, he was not responsible for the section on the Apocalypse. For the text, see Glossa ordinaria, ed. Migne 1852; for a facsimile edition, see Froehlich and Gibson (eds) 1992. 15 Richard of St Victor, ed. Migne 1855: 702. 16 It is incorrectly attributed by John Bale to Wycliffe’s secretary John Purvey, under whom it is often catalogued: Turner 2005: 129. On the Opus Arduum, see Hudson 1978; Bostick 1998: 76–113. 17 Purvey 1528: 5r. 18 Culpepper 2000: 175. 19 English translation from Jacobus de Voragine 1993: 51; Latin text in Jacobus de Voragine, ed. Graesse 1846: 56–7.

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the sea route to the Holy Land was often via the southern Mediterranean and Egypt, thus bypassing Patmos and other Aegean islands. Saewulf, who travelled on pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1102–1103, describes a short visit to the island, and notes its proximity to Ephesus. This visit would have been fifteen years or so after the foundation of the monastery by Christodoulos (in 1088), and shortly after the return of the monks after enforced exile and Christodoulos’s death: From thence [Crete] we passed by Carea, Omargon, Samos, Scyo, and Metelina. Afterwards we arrived at Patmos, where Blessed John the Apostle and Evangelist was banished by Domitian, and where he wrote the Apocalypse [Postea uenimus Pathmos, ubi beatus Iohannes apostolus et euangelista a Domiciano cesare religatus apocalipsin scripsit]. Ephesus is on one side, near to Smyrna, a day’s journey off, where the same [Evangelist] afterwards went alive into his sepulchre. The Apostle Paul also wrote an Epistle to the Ephesians. We then came to the islands of Leros and Calimno, and then to Anchos, where was born Galienus, the most highly esteemed physician among the Greeks.20

Patmos is also mentioned in a Description of the Holy Land written in 1350, by Ludolph, rector of Suchem (or Sudheim) in the diocese of Paderborn, although it is unclear whether Ludolph actually stopped on the island. In describing the islands between Achaia and Asia Minor, he mentions Syo (Chios), notable for its mastic, followed by Patmos: From Syo one sails to the desert isle of Patmos, whither St. John the Evangelist was exiled by Domitian, and where he saw the heavens open, and wrote the Book of Revelation. From Patmos you can sail on to the coast of Asia Minor and come to Ephesus, if you please.21

There is also a brief reference to Patmos in the probably fictional Travels of Sir John Mandeville. Originally written in French, and dependent on Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum Naturale and Historiale, this work began circulating between 1356 and 1366. It was widely translated, and remained popular for the next two centuries. Leonardo da Vinci owned a copy, and it was consulted by Christopher Columbus as a reliable source for information about the East. In the relevant passage, ‘Sir John’ is describing the journey from Constantinople via Silo (Chios) to Ephesus: Then men pass by the isle of Patmos, where Saint John the Evangelist wrote the Apocalypse. And you must know that when Our Lord died Saint John was thirtytwo years of age, and he lived after the Passion of Christ sixty-two years. From Patmos men go to Ephesus, a fair city, near to the sea. And there Saint John died,

20 21

Saewulf 1896:3 (English translation), 32 (Latin text). Ludolph von Suchem 1895: 29.

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and was buried behind the altar in a tomb. And there is a fine church; for Christian men used to possess that city.22

PATMOS AS APPROPRIATE LOCATION FOR VISION Increasingly popular in late medieval interpretation is what might be called an ‘analogical’ interpretation of Patmos, rooted in the literal interpretation of the island as the location for John’s vision but encouraging actualizations in the reader’s own day. While Domitianic exile remains the dominant explanation for John’s presence on the island, this is often set within the larger context of the unfolding divine plan, making God, not the emperor, the key player in the unfolding drama. John is on Patmos in order to receive the divine word through prayer and contemplation, hence a significant number of commentaries explore the appropriateness of the island for what will occur there; nor do they regard the Patmos experience as a privilege reserved for John, however exalted a figure the ‘virgin apostle’ became in medieval spirituality and liturgy.23 The exemplary character of John’s contemplative existence on Patmos is often to the fore. Thus the commentary of the Magister, attributed to Anselm of Laon (d.1117),24 notes in relation to the phrase ‘I was on the island’ (Rev. 1:9), the appropriateness of such a solitary location for the revelation of heavenly secrets to the faithful: Locus enim solitarius aptus est in quo secreta coelestia fidelibus revelentur.25 Richard of St Victor’s commentary of c.1150 (a reworking of the Glossa ordinaria) uses a string of adjectives to describe the physical separation of Patmos from the world: it is a ‘remote place, restful, set apart, and private’ (locus remotus et quietus et secretus, et privatus).26 These are matched by adjectives illustrating John’s personal character: (persona authentica et nota, honesta et amica). John serves as an example for whoever desires to contemplate the things of heaven (quisquis coelestia concupiscit contemplari in arca sanctitatis), and his remote island of Patmos becomes a symbol of that place of contemplation which other Christians may discover in their own lives.

22

Mandeville 2005: 53. On the visual presentation of John as a Christomorph in some medieval illustrations, see Hamburger 2002; see also Volfing 2001. 24 Anselm was responsible for much of the Glossa ordinaria, although probably not the section on the Apocalypse. There is doubt as to whether he is the author of the Apocalypse commentary attributed to him: Turner 2005: 96. 25 Anselm of Laon, ed. Migne 1854: 1504. 26 Richard of St Victor, ed. Migne 1855: 703. 23

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Similar sentiments are expressed by Geoffrey, abbot of Auxerre, in his commentary on the Apocalypse (c.1188).27 This commentary is a reworked set of sermons on Rev. 1–3 originally delivered to his Cistercian brethren. Given their homiletic genre and intended audience, it is not surprising to find the moral or tropological sense being to the fore: A remote place is suited to a spiritual vision [idoneus siquidem spiritali visioni locus secretus], a place remote from physical pleasure, and especially an exile imposed solely by hatred of godliness and borne of the love [of Christ] not only calmly but generously.28

Interest in the monastic implications of the island’s solitary character is also found in Joachim of Fiore (c.1135–1202). Joachim is one of the most important interpreters of the Apocalypse,29 influencing numerous others from the late Middle Ages through to the 19th century.30 Convinced by a vision that the Apocalypse was the key to both Scripture and human history, his is a complex exegesis which combines a conviction that the seven visions of Revelation signify the seven periods of the Church, in which the sixth period has particular importance, with a belief in three overlapping ages or status, the third of which would be marked by the renewal of monasticism. Although neither his Enchiridion to the Apocalypse31 nor the expanded Liber Introductarius32 make reference to Patmos, he does deal with it in his commentary proper, the Expositio super Apocalypsim (which he produced between 1184 and 1200). Commenting on Rev. 1:9, Joachim presents John the seer as a symbol of those in the Church committed to contemplation, and able to teach this to others. He draws on the gospel for the Mass of the Feast of St John (the end of John 21, in which Christ spells out the divergent vocations of Peter the shepherd-martyr and the beloved disciple who ‘abides’) to see Peter and John as figures of two ecclesiastical ‘orders’: For by these two are designated two most revered orders [duo reuerēdissimi ordines], by which the Church is continually blessed by the word of salvation: the clerical and the monastic. That is, of those who have care over the Lord’s

27 There is also an abbreviated version of Geoffrey’s Super Apocalypsim, generally found in manuscripts of the 13th and 14th centuries containing glosses of the whole Bible, drawn from a range of authors: see Gastaldelli 1970. 28 Sermo V: English translation from Geoffrey of Auxerre 2000: 61; Latin text in Goffredo di Auxerre, ed. Gastaldelli 1970: 101. 29 On Joachim’s thought see e.g. West and Zimdars-Swartz 1983; Wainwright 1993: 49–53; McGinn 1996; de Lubac 1998–2009: III, 327–419; Reeves 1999: 1–28. 30 On the latter, see Reeves and Gould 1987. 31 Joachim of Fiore, ed. Burger 1986. 32 This is an expanded version of the Enchiridion, published as an introduction to his Expositio: Gioacchino da Fiore, ed. Selge 1995.

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sheep, and then those who depart from this world so as to be able to have time alone for God [& eo[rum] tum q[ui] vt soli deo vacare queant: a seculo exeunt].33

Joachim continues by comparing the ‘solitary places’ of Patmos to the solitary life of the monastic, whether living as a hermit or in a monastic community (aut soli aliquando: & aliquandiu: aut in conuēntibus requiescunt), and explaining how Christ lays open to those called to the contemplative life ‘secret and profound mysteries’ (pādens illis archana & profunda mysteria). Indeed, this capacity for actualization may be even more directly related to Joachim’s own monastic life. According to Marjorie Reeves, the symbolic relationship Joachim detected between John and the contemplative life is the reason why he called his monastery San Giovanni in Fiore.34 A similar appeal to Patmos as a type of the contemplative life is found in Joachim’s treatise De Articulis Fidei, in the section entitled De utilitate predicationis et virtute silentii (‘On the usefulness of preaching and the virtue of silence’). For this reason it pleased him who causes all things according to the counsel of his will that there should be in his Church two orders of the perfect: one which should silently probe spiritual things for the knowledge of the truth which lies hidden there [unus qui silentium spiritalia rimetur ad sciendam que ibi latitat veritatem]; the other, when the truth is understood, should water thirsty hearts by preaching, like water drawn from a deep well. Therefore it is said to blessed John, exiled on the island of Pathmos and looking upon sacred mysteries: ‘Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia.’35

Emphasis on separation for the purposes of contemplation and vision is unsurprising from monastic writers like Geoffrey and Joachim, but similar readings are also found amongst the mendicant friars. One example is a Franciscan commentary often attributed to Bernardinus of Siena, although probably by Vital du Four (1260–1327), a Franciscan who opposed the Spirituals. Commenting on the ‘four conditions’ provided by Rev. 1:9, Vital writes: Secondly, the suitability of the place: since that was on the island of Pathmos, where he was better able to apply himself to contemplation and meditation on heavenly mysteries [ubi melius vacare poterat contemplationi & meditationi coelestium arcanorum].36

The reason for this, he continues, is that Patmos was separated from human population (a frequentia hominum sequestratus). This solitary Patmos of

33 34 35 36

Joachim of Fiore 1527: 38v-39r. Reeves 1999: 3. Latin text in Gioacchino da Fiore, ed. Buonaiuti 1936: 66–7. Latin text in Vital du Four 1745: 7–8.

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Vital’s imagination is a far cry from the vibrant population suggested by the inscriptional and archaeological evidence from the Roman period. A similar line of interpretation is found among the Joachite, ‘spiritual’ stream of the Franciscan movement.37 Speaking of the four features of John’s narratio in his Lectura super Apocalypsim of 1297, Peter John Olivi writes thus: The second condition is the fitness of the place; wherefore he substitutes the following: ‘I was on the island which is called Patmos.’ See that this was a place appropriate for divine contemplation and visions, remote, restful, set apart, and empty of sensual delights and riches [tanquam remotus et quietus et secretus ac deliciis et divitiis carnalibus vacuus].38

The adjectives remotus, quietus, and secretus have already been encountered in Richard of St Victor. But Olivi’s additional phrase, deliciis et divitiis carnalibus vacuus, reflects a distinctive feature of his exegesis. Olivi was more systematic than his predecessors in interpreting the Apocalypse as delineating seven ages of church history, differing from them with regard to the fifth to seventh ages.39 He located himself historically in the overlap between the fifth and sixth periods, and between the second and third Joachite states. A particular feature of his interpretation was his belief that, by the end of the fifth period, the Church would become a new Babylon, corrupt from head to toe, and led by a pseudo-pope who would persecute those who observed evangelical poverty.40 This concept of a ‘carnal church’, contrasted with the small number of the elect, is evoked by Olivi’s choice of the adjective carnalis, and by the reference to divitiae, ‘riches’. He comes tantalizingly close to presenting Patmos as a figura of the ‘spiritual church’, or of those who hold to evangelical poverty. A similar interest in the solitude of Patmos, although much more succinctly expressed and without Olivi’s idea of the ‘carnal church’, is found in the 1319 commentary of the Franciscan theologian Peter Aureol (c.1280–1322): John is sent ‘to a solitary place’ (ad locū solitariū).41 One final example comes from Dionysius the Carthusian (Denys van Leeuwen, 1402–71). Unsurprisingly, given the austerity of the Carthusian

37 Although note the caution expressed by David Burr about speaking of clearly defined ‘Spiritual Franciscans’ in the 13th century: Burr 2001: viii. 38 Latin text in Peter John Olivi, ed. Lewis 1972: 130. 39 Burr 2001: 76. Olivi agreed with his predecessors in seeing the first four as the periods of the apostles, martyrs, doctors, and anchorites respectively. He combined this with Joachim’s division of history into three status. 40 Burr 1993: 240–1; 2001: 75–88. Olivi’s predecessors had tended to locate their own time at the beginning of the fifth period. See also Manselli 1955. 41 Peter Aureol n.d., on Rev. 1:9. On the relationships between the various early Franciscan Apocalypse commentaries, see Burr 1992: 91–3.

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monastic vocation, Dionysius considers the suitability of Patmos’s isolated (semotus) location for contemplation, revelation, and prayer.42

ECCLESIAL INTERPRETAT IONS Several interpreters mentioned so far have made connections between Patmos and the experience of the contemporary church, especially, although not exclusively, in the monastic and mendicant patterns of Christian living. Several other commentators, especially those who remain influenced by Tyconian-Augustinian interpretation, also stress the moral and ecclesial dimensions of the text. With respect to Patmos, John’s experience on the island and the tribulations which brought him there are often treated as an example of solidarity with the suffering church, or even as a type of Christian trial in every age. This is unsurprising, given the ancient interpretation of the ‘seven churches of Asia’ as symbolizing the universal Church. John’s selfdesignation at Rev. 1:9 as ‘your brother’ (Vulgate frater vester) is therefore widely interpreted in relation to all Christians, whereby the ‘your’ has become the ecclesial ‘your’. Typical is the Expositio in Apocalypsim of Bruno of Segni, written soon after Bruno became bishop of Segni in 1079.43 Commenting on Rev. 1:9, Bruno emphasizes the solidarity between the church and John ‘your brother’, ‘whom, just as you, holy mother Church bore by water and the Holy Spirit’ (quem, sicut vos, ex aqua et Spiritu sancto sancta mater Ecclesia genuit). John’s tribulations, including his Patmos trials, the result of his unconquerable constancy in preaching the gospel (propter insuperabilem evangelizandi constantiam),44 are one with the tribulations of Christians in every age. Bruno’s ecclesial focus is also reflected in the interpretation of the seven churches as symbolizing ‘all the other churches of the world’. Berengaudus, whose popular commentary has been ascribed to various dates between the 9th and 12th centuries,45 reads John’s comments on Patmos 42 Locus enim ab aliorum habitatione semotus, quanto quietior, tanto contemplationi, reuelationi, orationiq; aptior: Latin text in Dionysius the Carthusian 1539: 102. Emphasis on the remoteness of Patmos leads some commentators to speculate on the character of John’s visionary experience: e.g. Anselm of Laon, ed. Migne 1854: 1499; Froehlich and Gibson (eds) 1992: IV, 548; Richard of St Victor, ed. Migne 1855: 686; see Dronke 1984: 146. 43 Text in Bruno of Segni, ed. Migne 1854: 603–736. For a discussion of the commentary in the context of Bruno’s life, see Grégoire 1965; also Wainwright 1993: 40. 44 Bruno of Segni, ed. Migne 1854: 611. Here Bruno follows Bede (see the section on Bede in Chapter 3). 45 Ninth century: Visser 1996: 44–103; 11th century: Klein 1992: 189; early 12th century: Lewis 1992: 261. Proposals for its author include Berengaudus, a 9th century Carolingian monk of Ferrières, and Berengar of Tours, Dean of Angers (c.1040).

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in a similar fashion. John’s self-designation at Rev. 1:9 identifies him as a fellow member of the church with other believers (quia et se membrum Ecclesiae, sicut et ipsi erant), exiled to Patmos for the same love for Christ with which the whole church endures adversity.46 Other exemplars of this ecclesial reading include Martin of Leon (d.1221, dependent on the Glossa ordinaria and Haimo of Auxerre), and the Franciscan Alexander Minorita (whose commentary went through several revisions between 1235 and 1249).47 Although his comments on Patmos are not unusual, the broader framework of Alexander Minorita’s interpretation sets him apart from his predecessors. He was a pioneer in interpreting the Apocalypse as a linear, chronologically sequential prophecy of the history of the church from the time of Christ to the last judgement (an approach he claimed was based on revelation granted while receiving communion). Rev. 1—including the Patmos passage—specifically concerns the primitive church in the past, whilst successive historical periods are described in subsequent visions, culminating in the eschaton in Rev. 22.48 An interesting variant to this ecclesial reading is found in the Glossa ordinaria. In commenting on Rev. 1:9, the Glossa presents John frater vester as encouraging fellow Christians to bear their own sufferings patiently, following the example of Christ. But it goes further, building on the nowestablished interpretation of Patmos as fretum, ‘strait’ or ‘raging’, which it paraphrases as ‘tribulation’ (tribulatio). This is combined with a figurative reading of the word insula, already attested in earlier interpreters. Given this meaning of John’s island, the Glossa moves to a figurative reading of Patmos. The church herself, afflicted by persecutions from ‘people of the sea’ or ‘worldly people’, finds a ready symbol in John’s island retreat: The Church is compared to an island [Ecclesia comparatur insulae], since, just as an island is dashed by storms of the sea, so the Church is afflicted by the persecutions of the people of the sea, that is, of worldly people [persecutionibus marinorum, id est mundanorum].49

This alliterative play on marinorum and mundanorum suggests that the sea surrounding Patmos functions as a symbol for the world, and Patmos as a figure for the Christian people.

46

Berengaudus, ed. Migne 1845: 770. Excerpts from Berengaudus’s commentary are found in many of the Anglo-Norman illuminated Apocalypses. 47 Alexander Minorita, ed. Wachtel 1955: 14–15. 48 Burr 1993: 31. 49 Latin text in Glossa ordinaria, ed. Migne 1852: 712.

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PA TM OS AS F R E TU M Closely related to the ecclesial interpretation is the figurative reading of Patmos as fretum, ‘strait’ or ‘raging’, already found in one manuscript of Primasius, and reasserted by Ambrose Autpert and Haimo of Auxerre. As noted above, the Glossa ordinaria to the Apocalypse has this reading. It is also known to Anselm of Laon (in the Commentary of the ‘Magister’), the main influence behind the Glossa.50 The Glossa’s widespread influence, as well as the circulation of Haimo’s commentary, may well account for the fretum reading becoming one of the most widespread interpretations of Patmos in later commentaries. Among others, it is known to Joachim of Fiore, Rupert of Deutz, Martin of Leon, Geoffrey of Auxerre, Alexander Minorita, and Peter John Olivi. It is paralleled by regular medieval attempts to interpret the names of the seven churches. The Glossa, for example, commenting on Rev. 2:1, provides three meanings for the name Ephesus. The Apocalypse commentary of Rupert of Deutz (c.1075–1129), a native of Liège who became abbot of the Benedictine Abbey of Deutz in 1120, uses the fretum reading to accord an exemplary role to John. Rupert was inspired by the attempts of Pope Gregory VII (Hildebrand, 1073–1085) to reform the church, and his Apocalypse commentary (1119–1121) bears traces of this ‘Gregorian’ reform.51 It marks a break with the vaguer moral exegesis of the Latin commentary tradition with its more focused historicizing approach. Rupert’s perception—influenced by personal experience of exile and ecclesiastical schism—that the church of his own time was under siege, and that the Apocalypse presented ‘a vision of the Church labouring in time toward its eternal destiny in the Heavenly Jerusalem’,52 is reflected in his comments on Rev. 1:9. Having first offered an explanation of the significance of fretum (‘for, to the extent that it [a strait] is narrow, there the sea boils more’ [fervet enim illic mare amplius, eo quod sit angustum]), Rupert presents John as an example for all the saints, despite their afflictions: To the one exiled there, to whom the earth was denied, heaven was opened. Therefore he is an example to all the saints, because however much they are afflicted in the raging of the present age [quod quanto magis in freto praesentis saeculi affliguntur], so much more are heavenly secrets revealed to them.53

Peter John Olivi knows not only the fretum interpretation, but several further possibilities. Fretum is juxtaposed to vorago (‘breach’, ‘chasm’, or ‘abyss’) and

50

Anselm of Laon, ed. Migne 1854: 1504. The standard work on Rupert is van Engen 1983. On the Gregorian model of reform, see McGinn 2000: 74–8. 52 van Engen 1983: 278. 53 Latin text in Rupert of Deutz, ed. Migne 1854: 850. 51

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fervor (‘fervour’ or ‘seething’, as of the sea).54 Olivi’s immediate source for these interpretations is ‘Papias’; i.e. the 11th-century Papias the Grammarian.55 Fervor is an interesting choice, since on the Latin gematrial system applied in Chapter 3, it shares with Patmos and fretum the numerical equivalence of 79. Olivi’s further two interpretations of the name are connected with his theory of the ‘carnal church’: Patmos,56 however, is an island of Greece, and is interpreted ‘separated enemies’ or ‘separation of the flatterers’, and it corresponds to this mystery: since in an excess [or in the ecstasy] of contemplation enemies of the Spirit and flatterers, that is sensual and carnal people, are separated.57

Olivi’s interpretation finds in Patmos a prophetic allusion to ‘the separated enemies’ (separati hostes) of God’s people, identified as sensuales et carnales, and as those who ‘flatter’ (the most obvious translation here of palpare, although the root meeting is ‘to touch’ or ‘to handle’). The precise meaning of in excessu contemplationis is unclear: it could be referring negatively to an ‘excess’ of contemplation on the part of the carnal (cf. 2 Cor. 12:7). Alternatively, it could mean that it is in the ecstasy of contemplation itself that the spiritual are able to see the carnal for what they truly are. Perhaps the most adventurous use of the fretum reading is found in the writings of Geoffrey of Auxerre, abbot of Clairvaux and disciple of St Bernard in the Cistercian reform, which forms part of Geoffrey’s interpretation of Patmos as a figure for the monastic life. The relevant passage comes in his Sermo V (dealing with Rev. 1:9–10). Geoffrey takes as his starting-point the now well-established interpretation of Patmos as fretum. According to the literal sense, the name Patmos is intelligible: According to the literal meaning [iuxta litteram], on the other hand, the island is called Patmos because the seething and roaring sea around it beats on the shore with vehement force [quod aequoreus fervor et fremitus quodam impetu vehementi saeviat circa eam]. It is not a pleasant place; it would seem a wretched and discouraging [miserum et miserabile] place of exile for no greater cause than punishment.58

54 Indeed, manuscript C reads fervor for fretum. Manuscript S has the reading flutum in place of fretum. 55 Peter Olivi, ed. Lewis 1972: 130. Papias Grammaticus 1491: Pathmos insula est graeciae in quã relegatus fuit Iohannes euangelista: interpretatur genus fretũ uel uorago. His entry for fretum suggests a link with fervor: Nam fretũ est angustum & quasi feruens mare. 56 A variant reading for ‘Patmos’ is ‘Patmothos’ (S). 57 Latin text in Peter Olivi, ed. Lewis 1972: 130. 58 English translation from Geoffrey of Auxerre 2000: 59; Latin text in Goffredo di Auxerre, ed. Gastaldelli 1970: 99.

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Indeed, in John’s biography, it is the ‘vast harsh prison of the sea’ (carcere . . . gravissimo mari magno). Figuratively understood, however, Patmos is a misnomer for the island given it by the foolish: As once Noah, whom the Lord found just, prepared an ark for the deluge, so even now the Lord’s loving-kindness provides an island for his faithful in the midst of this great sea [ita etiam nunc in hoc mari magno fidelibus suis providet insulam]. Although the cravenness of the foolish considered it and referred to it as Patmos, which means ‘whirlpool’ or ‘raging sea’ [id est fretum vel voraginem], it is not a whirlpool or a raging sea but an island [non est tamen fretum vel vorago, sed insula]. Although it is in the high sea it is not sea, not undulant, but firm. Those who discuss such matters say that ‘raging’ [fretum] refers to a rough and rolling sea. But Patmos is an island in the deep yet not of the deep [Insula est, in salo est, sed non de salo], as apostles are in the world yet not of the world.59

Geoffrey thereby dismisses many of his august predecessors, who used the fretum interpretation, as ‘foolish,’ ‘unwise’ (insipientes). On the contrary, although Patmos may be located in the midst of the raging sea, it does not belong to it. Rather it is an island of security akin to Noah’s ark. John’s island is not a Patmos, if that means a fretum or vorago. Geoffrey then moves to his distinctive contribution. The foolish are mistaken when they view the Cistercian way of life as a Patmos: Have this same mind in you, beloved, and remember that the foolish call your disciplined way of life ‘Patmos’ [quod disciplina vestra ab insipientibus Patmos dicitur], and consider it a ‘raging sea’, restless, turbulent, and intolerable [fretum turbidum, inquietum, intolerabile]. But the faithful find it instead an island.60

This represents a unique interpretation of insula quae appellatur Patmos, against the consensus view which understands the verb ‘called’ positively, as identifying the island’s actual name. For Geoffrey and wise monks, it is indeed an ‘island’; however, it is only called Patmos, i.e. a fretum, by the foolish.

THREE ANONYMOUS MENDICANT COMMENTARIES Several early Franciscan commentators have been discussed already (Peter John Olivi, Alexander Minorita, Peter Aureol). However, there are other commentaries, springing from both Franciscan and Dominican traditions, which deserve separate treatment due to the complexity and novelty of their 59

Geoffrey of Auxerre 2000: 56; Latin text in Goffredo di Auxerre, ed. Gastaldelli 1970: 96. English translation from Geoffrey of Auxerre 2000: 58; Latin text in Goffredo di Auxerre, ed. Gastaldelli 1970: 97. 60

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interpretations of Patmos. This fact, and the importance of apocalyptic language and imagery for the self-understanding of the early mendicant friars, makes them particularly interesting examples of Apocalypse interpretation during this period.61 We begin with two unnamed Dominican commentaries, known by their opening words. The first, Aser pinguis (c.1236), is thought either to be the work of Hugh of St Cher, or of a ‘team’ working under his supervision.62 The opening quotation is from the Vulgate of Gen. 49:20, the dying Jacob’s blessing over his son Asher: Aser pinguis panis eius et praebebit delicias regibus (‘Asher’s bread will be rich, and he will supply delights for kings’). Aser is given a threefold allegorical interpretation, as atrium (‘court’), divitiae (‘wealth’), and beatitudo (‘blessedness’), all of which are said to signify the blessed John.63 In its commentary on Rev. 1:9, Aser pinguis presents John as a figure of the ‘just man’ beset by tribulation, revealed in the two words insula and Pathmos (or Phathmos). This combination of an allegorical and tropological interpretation of both words involves a complex juxtaposition of texts from Job 39 (part of God’s answer to Job, the archetypal just man) and Ps. 42 (the prayer of the just soul who yearns for God): ‘I was on the island.’ The soul of a just man is called ‘an island’ which has been placed in this life in the salt (sea) of bitterness: in the conflict of temptations [Anima iusti dicitur insula que posita est in hac vita in sale amaritudinum: in conflictu temptationũ]. Hence Job 39:6: ‘His tabernacle is in the land of saltiness.’ Since the just man is placed in bitterness, he longs and thirsts for the sweet water of the fountain of life, Ps. 42:1: ‘Just as a deer longs for the fountains of water; so my soul longs for you, O God.’ Even so this island is called Pathmos, on account of the rushing and raging of external persecutions and difficulties [propter fremitum & feruorem exteriorum persecutionum & angustiarum]: through which worldliness is swallowed up in the just.64

Aser pinguis underscores this figurative reading by citing the fretum interpretation, and further Old Testament quotations which emphasize the solitude Patmos represents. I will mention just two here. The first is again from Job 39:6. In its literary context the verse describes the dwelling God has given to the wild ass, now interpreted as the dwelling of the righteous: Cui dedi in solitudine domum (‘to whom I have given a house in solitude’). Another is from the Vulgate of Hos. 2:14, a verse originally referring to Israel as God’s spouse, enticed into the wilderness by the divine lover after her marital infidelity: ducam eam in solitudinem: et loquar ad cor eius (‘I will lead her 61

See Pacetti 1961; Burr 1992 and 2001; Roest 1994. For the place of visions among the Spiritual Franciscans, in the circles around Peter John Olivi, see Burr 1985: 278–80. 62 Lerner 1985: 181–8. 63 Aser pinguis 1538: f. cccxxxii v. 64 Latin text in Aser pinguis 1538: f. cccxxxvi r.

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into solitude, and I will speak to her heart’). The author of Aser pinguis exploits the decision of the Vulgate to translate the word ‘wilderness’ (Hebrew ‫מְדָבּר‬. LXX æÅ ) as solitudo, although alters the feminine eam to the masculine eum to enable a closer fit with John. The second Dominican commentary, Vidit Iacob,65 is a revision and expansion of Aser pinguis. In Lerner’s view, it was written between 1240 and 1244, again by the ‘consortium’ around Hugh of St Cher.66 It too begins with a quotation from Genesis, in this case Gen. 28:12: Jacob saw in his dreams a ladder standing upon the earth, and its top touching heaven, and the angels of God ascending and descending by it, and the Lord resting on the ladder (Vidit jacob in somnis scalam stantem super terram, et cacumen ejus tangens caelum, et angelos dei ascendentes et descendentes per eam, et dominum innixum scalae).

The first point of interest is that Vidit Iacob establishes a typological relationship between the biblical story of the patriarch Jacob and the biography of John.67 This is reflected not only in their shared privilege of seeing heaven opened. The typology extends to several features of their respective stories, perhaps picking up on Christ’s words to Nathanael in the Johannine Gospel, significantly addressed not to Nathanael in the singular but to the plural witnesses (John 1:51). So Jacob is called ‘beloved of God’ (dilectus dei) among the patriarchs, as John is among the apostles. Just as Jacob fled from Laban with his daughters, so John fled the world with his, interpreted allegorically as ‘sinful souls’ (filias eius; id est animas peccatrices), whom he led with him to the Church (secum ad ecclesiam duxit). Similarly, John mirrors Jacob’s flight from his own land to Mesopotamia to escape the wrath of Esau, by his exile from his own land to Patmos as a result of the anger of Domitian. There he deserved to contemplate heavenly mysteries ‘after many difficulties and labours’ (post multas angustias et labores meruit caelestia sublimius et clarius contemplari). The word for ‘difficulties’, angustiae, can also be translated ‘strait’, connecting this to the common interpretation of Patmos as fretum. The content of the heavenly mysteries John sees concern the Church militant on earth and 65

Vidit Iacob 1980. Lerner 1985: 158–61, 164–6, 181–8. D. M. Solomon notes Stegmüller’s proposal that its author was Guerric of St Quentin, a contemporary of Hugh of St Cher at the Dominican school in Paris: Solomon 1976: 377. 67 According to Hamburger, Jacob’s ladder was regularly interpreted as a prefiguring of John’s vision while reclining on the Lord’s breast at the Last Supper: Hamburger 2002: 112. There may also be an echo, in this Dominican commentary, of the vision of Guali or Guala, prior of the Dominican community in Brescia, in 1221: Guali saw the dying Dominic ascend to heaven on a ladder. John climbing to heaven on a ladder also features as an illustration for Rev. 4:1 in the Corpus-Lambeth group of Anglo-Norman Apocalypses (e.g. Lambeth Palace MS. 75, fol. 7r): Emmerson and McGinn (eds) 1992: 145. 66

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triumphant in heaven, symbolized in this increasingly complex allegory by the two sides of Jacob’s ladder (duo latera scalae, duae sunt partes ecclesiae militantis in tera [sic] et triumphantis in caelo), which stood on the earth, but touched heaven.68 Thus, at least by implication, Patmos becomes another Bethel, another ‘house of God’. Having established this relationship between the exiled visionary Jacob and the contemplative exile John, Vidit Iacob’s commentary on Rev. 1:9 repeats the Glossa ordinaria’s interest in the fourfold persona, locus, causa, and tempus, and the established link between John’s resting on the Lord’s breast at the Last Supper and the vision he now sees. It then goes on to emphasize the appropriateness of the Patmos location for the contemplation of the things of heaven, assuming the well-established Western perception of John’s island as remote and depopulated: ‘I was on the island which is called Pathmos,’ sent into exile by Domitian. And it is a place remote from the multitude of humanity; and therefore more appropriate for contemplation [et ideo magis aptus ad contemplationem].69

This is followed by the Hosea quotation, already found in Aser pinguis, although the author of Vidit Iacob has no hesitation in retaining the feminine pronoun eam in reference to John, the virgin apostle, now led into the solitude of contemplation on Patmos. This apparently reflects the medieval tradition of John the beloved as the ‘spouse’ of Christ.70 In a similar fashion, the time this took place, on the Lord’s day, is a time ripe for visionary experience: ‘On the Lord’s day,’ which is a time appropriate for contemplation, since then a person ought to cease from external work and to have time for prayer and contemplation [quia tunc debet cessare homo ab opere exteriori et vacare orationi et contemplationi] . . .

Vidit Iacob then proceeds to mention examples of those who encounter God or angels at specific times: Abraham, Lot, Adam, and Solomon, increasing the potential for further typological interpretations of Patmos. The influence of Vidit Iacob is evident in the work of two 13th-century Dominican commentators. The first, Peter of Tarantaise (later Pope Innocent V), composed his Apocalypse commentary between 1259 and 1269, also making use of Aser pingius. Peter quotes Vidit Iacob verbatim at this point, describing Patmos as locus remotus a frequentia hominum, et ideo magis aptus ad contemplatione.71 His contemporary Nicholas of Gorran, or 68

69 Vidit Iacob 1980: 217. Latin text in Vidit Iacob 1980: 219. E.g. Volfing 2001: 26–41. 71 Peter of Tarantaise 1899: 489. He is not to be confused with the earlier Cistercian of the same name. Peter’s commentary was formerly attributed to Albert the Great: see Lerner 1985: 161; Burr 1992: 90. 70

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Gorham, whose commentary (often misattributed to Duns Scotus) is dated to c.1263–1285, similarly notes its remote location, describing Patmos as ‘greatly suitable for contemplation’. He goes on to cite the quotation from Hosea 2:14 (again retaining the feminine eam).72 A third anonymous 13th-century Apocalypse commentary is known by its opening words Vox Domini. Although published among the works of Thomas Aquinas, it is now believed to be by a Franciscan rather than a Dominican. Of three references to the lives of a saint, two are to St Francis, both derived from Thomas of Celano’s Vita Prima. The latter fact suggests a date prior to 1266, when Bonaventure’s Legenda major became the official biography.73 In its comment on Rev. 1:9, Vox Domini exploits the fretum interpretation to present the island of Patmos as a symbol for the saints, placed in the turbulence and tribulation of the world’s sea, a state which enables heavenly things to be seen. The author provides the example of John’s great predecessor Ezekiel, who saw heavenly visions while amongst the exiles, and connects the persecution of John and others in the church with the final beatitude from Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, an important text for St Francis and his followers: ‘Blessed are those who suffer persecution for the sake of justice’ (beati qui persecutionem patiuntur propter justitiam, Matt. 5:10).74

ACTUALIZATION OF JO HN ’S P ATMO S EXPERIENCE: FRANCIS OF ASSISI A novel example of early Franciscan exegesis of Revelation is found in the Commentarius in Apocalypsim B. Ioannis published in 1647 under the name of Alexander of Hales (c.1183–1245).75 This is now believed to be wrongly attributed: it is closely related to the Apocalypse commentary attributed to the later Franciscan author Vital du Four (1260–1327), and possibly written by him.76 With respect to Rev. 1:9, the ‘Alexander’ commentary notes the island’s remoteness from human society, and its consequent suitability for

72 Nicholas of Gorran 1620: 185; on authorship, see Meier 1950; Lerner 1985: 160–1; Burr 1992: 90. 73 Burr 1992: 92. 74 Vox Domini 1980: 723. 75 Alexander of Hales 1648. The frontispiece of de la Haye’s edition depicts a friar, apparently Alexander, preaching before a group which includes St Bonaventure and St Thomas Aquinas, both with open books and quills in their hands. 76 See Burr 1992: 92, although Burr notes that this attribution, made already in some manuscripts, is not without its difficulties.

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contemplatio. It knows the connection, already found in Aser pinguis, Vidit Iacob, and Nicholas of Gorran, with the prophecy of Hosea, in which God promises to lead his spouse ‘into solitude’. It also explores the meaning of the name Pathmos, in a manner similar to Peter John Olivi’s commentary. But the ‘Alexander’ commentary’s most distinctive contribution to the interpretation of Patmos is its brief but totally unexpected reference to St Francis of Assisi: ‘Therefore the blessed Francis was seeking a solitary place’ (Ideo Beatus Franciscus quaerebat locum solitarium).77 A reference to St Francis in itself is not surprising in a commentary written by a Franciscan. Bonaventure famously identified Francis with the angel ‘from the rising sun’ (Rev. 7:2) in the Prologue to his Life of St Francis, followed by Peter John Olivi who regarded him as the initiator of the sixth age of renewal.78 What makes this unusual is the specific connection it makes between Patmos and Francis’s ‘solitary place’. Whatever Francis’s own motives, the author of the ‘Alexander’ commentary clearly believes that the saint was inspired by John’s retreat to Patmos to replicate John’s island experience. This would be an example of Kovacs’s and Rowland’s second type of ‘actualization’,79 whereby Francis—or the imagined ‘Francis’ of this particular commentator—attempts to ‘see again’ what John saw in his own mystical prayer. The precise reference in the life of St Francis is somewhat obscure, partly because his first biographer, Thomas of Celano, makes frequent reference to the saint seeking secluded places. Celano’s Vita Prima, commissioned by Pope Gregory IX to coincide with the canonization of Francis in 1228, provides a suitably apocalyptic backdrop to the saint’s conversion by describing how he ‘walked about the streets of Babylon’ (iter agens per medium Babyloniae platearum: Vita Prima I.I [2.5]). Early in his career, before he sold all his goods, Celano relates how Francis sought out a grotto near the city where he would pray in secret to his heavenly Father (Vita Prima I.III [6.6–7]). Later we hear how Francis sought a place of prayer (locum orationis petiit), from where he ‘saw a great multitude of men coming to us and wanting to live with us in the habit of our way of life and under the rule of our blessed religion’ (Vidi multitudinem magnam hominum ad nos venientium et in habitu sanctae conversationis beataeque religionis regula nobiscum volentium conversari: Vita Prima I.XI [26.2; 27.3]).80 We also hear how the friars around Francis discussed whether they would be better seeking somewhere solitary than living alongside their fellow human beings (I.XIV [35]).

77

Alexander of Hales 1648: 14. Peter John Olivi, ed. Lewis 1972: 12: sextus vero aliqualiter cepit a tempore seraphici viri patris nostri Francisci. See also Burr 1992: 94, 102. 79 Kovacs and Rowland 2004: 9. 80 English translation from Thomas of Celano 1963: 3, 5, 15–16; Latin text in Menestò and Brufani (eds) 1995: 278, 282, 300–1. 78

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Similarly, as Michael Robson has noted, the lead-up to the meeting with the leper in the ‘more theological form’ of Celano’s 1244 Vita Secunda is marked by a purgative process whereby Francis spent time in solitary places conducive to prayer.81 Celano describes how he withdrew ‘from public to solitary places’ (solitaria loca de publicis petens), or how he ‘frequented hidden places as more suitable for prayer’ (loca frequentat abscondita velut orationibus congrua), from which the devil tried to drive him away (Vita Secunda I.V [9.1–3]). This is a motif repeated later in Celano’s narrative: he describes how Francis ‘always sought a hidden place’ (locum semper petebat absconditum), and provides an insight into his regular pattern of prayer (Vita Secunda II.LXI [94.7; 95.1]): But when he prayed in the woods and in solitary places [in silvis vero et solitudinibus orans], he would fill the woods with sighs, water the places with his tears, strike his breast with his hand; and discovering there a kind of secret hiding place [ibique quasi occultius secretarium nactus], he would often speak with his Lord with words.82

Another possible contender is an event recounted in the Fioretti di San Francesco, which closely parallels John’s Patmos experience in that it too involves an island. The author of the Fioretti describes how Francis spent one Lent hidden on an uninhabited island (un’isola del lago dove non abitasse persona) in the Lake of Perugia, fasting and praying.83 Against this, however, is the lack of a specific reference to a ‘solitary place’. A more likely solution may be found in two episodes dated by Thomas of Celano to the last two years of Francis’s life. The first is his retreat to an unnamed hermitage, as described in Book II of Celano’s Vita Prima. The second, immediately following the first in Celano’s account, is his vision of a crucified seraph on Mount La Verna. Although Celano’s narrative leaves open the possibility that these are two different locations, albeit closely connected chronologically, both locations are hermitages, and the La Verna episode is introduced as if Francis were already there: ‘while he was living in the hermitage which was called Alverna’ (in eremitorio, quod a loco in quo positum est Alverna nominatur: Vita Prima II.III [94.1]).84 Michael Robson understands them to be one and the same: In the late summer of 1224 Francis had withdrawn from the crowds and sought out a quiet and secret place in order to spend time with God and to renew himself.

81

On this see Robson 1997: 20, also 102. English translation from Thomas of Celano 1963: 136; Latin text in Menestò and Brufani (eds) 1995: 530. 83 McKay 1963: 14–15; Bughetti (ed.) 1980: 1470. 84 Thomas of Celano 1963: 49; Menestò and Brufani (eds) 1995: 369. 82

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With a small group of companions he went to the hermitage at La Verna in the province of Tuscany in search of deeper communion with his Creator.85

In Celano’s account of the withdrawal to the unnamed hermitage, we learn that Francis ‘sought out a quiet and secret place of solitude, desiring to spend his time there with God and to cleanse himself of any dust that may have clung to him from his association with men’ (locum quietis et secretum solitudinis petiit, cupiens ibi vacare Deo et extergere, si quid pulveris sibi ex conversatione hominum adhaesisset: Vita Prima II.II [91.1–2]).86 Here we have a specific place described in a fashion similar to the ‘solitary place’ of the ‘Alexander’ commentary, and one which was invested with profound significance, for Celano tells us that Francis spent considerable time at this hermitage, where he attained an ‘indescribable intimacy’ with God through prayer and contemplation. It was here, moreover, that Francis opened the book of the gospels three times, each time being presented with a passage concerning the Lord’s passion. In their edition of Celano, Menestò and Brufani have detected a reference to Rev. 5:7–8, where the Lamb takes the book or scroll in order to open it.87 Yet they may have missed a further apocalyptic allusion, and one which connects Francis more closely with the seer of Patmos. The divine will revealed in this threefold opening is that Francis would suffer ‘tribulation’ (tribulationem), an echo of John’s own words at Rev. 1:9. The possibility that this unnamed hermitage is indeed Mount La Verna is strengthened by the account in the Fioretti of how Francis and his brothers acquired the mountain from its owner, Roland of Chiusi di Casentino. Roland approached Francis with the following offer: I have a mountain in Tuscany most proper for devout contemplation that is called the mount of La Verna, and is very solitary and meet for those that desire to do penance in a place far away from the world, or to lead a solitary life [lo quale è molto solitario e salvatico ed è troppe bene atto a chi volesse fare penitenza, in luogo rimosso dalle gente, o a chi desidera vita solitaria]; and if it so please thee, fain would I give it to thee and to thy companions for the salvation of my soul.88

Again, the emphasis is on its being ‘solitary’ or remote from the world. If the allusion in ‘Alexander’ is indeed to Mount La Verna, then the actualization of John’s Patmos experience is all the more striking, given that the mountain retreat was the location of Francis’s most profound mystical experience, during which he received the stigmata. 85 86 87 88

Robson 1997: 262–3. Thomas of Celano 1963: 48–9; Menestò and Brufani (eds) 1995: 367. Thomas of Celano 1963: 48–9; Menestò and Brufani (eds) 1995: 366–8. English translation from McKay 1963: 100; Italian text in Bughetti (ed.) 1980: 1579.

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PATMOS IN REV. 10 In the early patristic period, both Victorinus and Hippolytus spoke of Patmos in commenting upon Rev. 10. This connection is replicated in some medieval commentaries. The chapter in question describes the descent of a mighty angel holding a little scroll, which John is commanded to take and devour. Although not explicitly stated, the context—the angel standing on both sea and land— would suggest that John is now back on Patmos following his heavenly ascent at 4:1.89 This is certainly how a number of Latin commentators read the passage. The particular interest of commentators is on the scroll which John is given to eat (Rev. 10:10), and the command in verse 11 that he must ‘prophesy again about [or ‘against’] many peoples and nations and languages and kings’. This provides an opportunity for some to give further information about John’s time on Patmos. Martin of Leon, for example, tells us that John was in prison on the island, from which he will go in order to fulfil the command to preach (Quia de carcere, de insula scilicet Pathmos exibis).90 Peter of Tarantaise notes the ‘promise of liberation’ which the words of the angel offers, directing John beyond his present circumstances on Patmos to his renewed preaching ministry on the mainland (recepit consolationem de promissa liberatione, et restituenda sibi praedicatione).91 But there is also speculation as to how this prophetic mission given to John on Patmos might be accomplished. The Vulgate translation of Rev. 10:11, replacing the ambiguous K of the Greek with the simple dative (oportet te iterum prophetare populis et gentibus et linguis et regibus multis), interprets John’s commission as to prophesy to many peoples and nations, languages and kings. Some commentators note the difficulties of finding this literally fulfilled in John’s subsequent biography, which according to patristic tradition involved his return to Ephesus after Domitian’s death. At least two answers are provided for this dilemma. First, John’s Gospel, traditionally composed in Ephesus following John’s return from Patmos, is interpreted as a written form of preaching. This explanation is found both in Nicholas of Gorran, and in the commentary attributed to Alexander of Hales. Nicholas offers the following explanation: ‘We say that he preached to many kings in writing, and not in word’ (dicimus quod scripto pluribus regibus praedicauit etsi non verbo).92 John was able to preach, across time to many kings, through his written Gospel. Similarly, ‘Alexander’ paraphrases the words of the ‘mighty angel’ (‘You must prophesy again . . . ’) thus: 89 90 91 92

E.g. Smalley 2005: 256. Latin text in Martin of Leon, ed. Migne 1855: 358. Latin text in Peter of Tarantaise 1899: 634. Latin text in Nicholas of Gorran 1620: 234.

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as if it should say, you will not die on the island of Patmos [non morieris in Patmos insula], but you will write a Gospel, by which you will prophesy to the aforesaid, namely to kings and to the others . . .93

Like Nicholas, ‘Alexander’ explains the preaching to ‘kings’ as achieved via the written Gospel. However, he goes on to describe a ‘group of preachers’ (coetus praedicatorum) who will assume power after the death of Antichrist, in fulfilment of the Lord’s words (oportet iterum, scilicet Antichristo mortuo, prophetare). Although not made explicit, this may be a specific reference to the Franciscans, or the mendicants generally, investing the commentator’s present, or near future, with eschatological significance. This latter comment of ‘Alexander’ represents a second type of explanation, which understands John as a type of the preachers of the last days. Prior to the rise of the mendicants, Martin of Leon (c.1130–1203) had already spoken of contemporary ‘holy preachers’ in his commentary on this passage, connecting John’s action of devouring the scroll with the activity of preaching in his own day: We have holy preachers [sanctos praedicatores], who meditate on the law of the Lord day and night, and are able to say with the Psalmist: ‘How sweet is your speech to my taste, more than honey to my mouth’ (Ps. 118[119]:103).94

Nicholas of Gorran offers a similar interpretation. The commission given to John on Patmos can be understood as a prophecy for those whom Nicholas calls ‘the preachers of the last time’ (prędicatores vltimi temporis), whose prophetic ministry will flourish in the period following the death of the Antichrist.95 Being a member of the Order of Preachers, Nicholas may have Dominicans specifically in mind. Yet this interpretation, whether in ‘Alexander’, Martin, or Nicholas, is not a straightforwardly allegorical interpretation in the Kovacs-Rowland sense of ‘decoding’. It acknowledges the primary reference to John’s own preaching, but also allows that these prophetic words can find further fulfilment in the ministry of later preachers whose activities parallel those of the seer of Patmos (‘actualization’ in their first sense of juxtaposing the text with the interpreter’s own circumstances).96

PATMOS IN WESTERN MEDIEVAL LITURGY AND DEVOTION Much of the discussion so far has focused on Latin commentaries and monastic homilies, although there has been some attention to texts with more popular appeal, such as Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend and the 93 94 95

Latin text in Alexander of Hales 1648: 188. Latin text in Martin of Leon, ed. Migne 1855: 358. 96 Nicholas of Gorran 1620: 234. Kovacs and Rowland 2004: 8–9.

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Travels of Sir John Mandeville. Chapter 7 will consider the visualization of Patmos in medieval art. However, there is another major context within which perceptions of Patmos would have been shaped in the Middle Ages: the liturgy. This liturgical milieu has, in fact, been in the background of many of the interpretations examined so far in this chapter, which would have been shaped in no small measure by the life of prayer, communal as well as private. Whilst the Apocalypse seems to have been read liturgically between Easter and Pentecost (along with Acts and the Pastoral Epistles),97 it is on the two Western feasts of St John (St John the Evangelist on 27th December and St John before the Latin Gate on 6th May) that attention to Patmos would have particularly surfaced. As Annette Volfing notes, however, access to medieval Latin liturgical traditions is not straightforward, given the diversity of liturgical practice and the incompleteness of the surviving evidence. Fortunately, her research reveals that, at least in the case of St John, there was relative uniformity in liturgical texts. She has therefore provided a helpful sketch of the Office and Mass propers for the two feast days.98 The Epistle for the December feast (Sir. 15:1–6) sets the imaginative tone by its reference to the virtuous man whom Wisdom, or in some liturgical emendations of the text ‘the Lord’ (Dominus), allows to drink of ‘the water of saving wisdom’ (aqua sapientiae salutaris). This is interpreted of John, who drinks the Gospel from the bosom of Christ at the Last Supper, before pouring it into the world ‘like one of the rivers of paradise’ (quasi unus de paradisi fluminibus). The quotation here is from chapter 71 of Isidore’s De ortu et obitu patrum, a key non-canonical text drawn upon for readings for the Office of the day.99 The same motif of John drinking from Christ’s breast is well expressed in an antiphon for this Office: This is John, who reclined on the Lord’s breast; the blessed apostle, to whom were revealed heavenly mysteries [Iste est Joannes, qui supra pectus Domini recubuit: beatus apostolus, cui revelata sunt secreta coelestia].100 This theme is germane to this present book, for it establishes an important and intimate connection between what John imbibed whilst reclining at the supper, and the ‘substance’ of those mysteries now revealed in celestial secrets on Patmos, and devoured by John in the ‘little scroll’ of Rev. 10:10.101 Patmos, the island of revelation, and Jerusalem, the location of the revelatory Upper 97 98 99 100 101

van Engen 1983: 275. Volfing 2001: 60–97. Isidore, ed. Chaparro Gómez 1985: 205; see Volfing 2001: 72. Ant. 3425: Volfing 2001: 74, n. 24. Hamburger 2002: 131.

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Room, belong together in the Johannine revelation expounded in both Gospel and Apocalypse. A significant number of hymns for both Johannine feasts have also survived, from various periods and for use in a variety of contexts, monastic and non-monastic. There is little variation in theme between the two feast days,102 despite the focus of the 6th May on the specific boiling oil episode. Rather, hymns and sequences for both days tend to focus on the broad sweep of John’s life and theological insight, which both highlights the distinctive virtues of the saint being honoured, and leaves open the possibility of imitatio on the part of the contemporary congregation. Several hymns make specific reference to Patmos, shedding some light on how the island was perceived and providing clues as to the most popular traditions and the preferred hagiographical texts. Generally, they locate Patmos within the sequence of events which includes the oil incident in Rome as the immediate catalyst for John’s exile, particularly appropriate for the May feast. A hymn for St John the Evangelist (i.e. for 27th December), attributed to Albert of Prague, contrasts the villainous acts of Domitian with the virtues of St John: The impious Domitian, a man wicked and profane, sent into a vat full of boiling oil your body, pleasant because of your love of the faith [Nefandus Domitianus, Vir iniquus et profanus, In ferventis olei Doliumque misit plenum Corpus tuum peramoenum Ob amorem fidei]. But it remained unharmed; after this he sent you to desolate Pathmos, into exile, where you, snatched up, saw wondrous things, which you finally wrote down in a heavenly book [Sed illaesum illud mansit; Post haec te in Pathmos misit Vastum in exsilium, Ubi raptus tu vidisti 102 Similarly, the liturgical texts for St John before the Latin Gate do not greatly vary from those of 27th December, apart from greater concentration in the non-biblical readings on the oil episode itself: Volfing 2001: 96–7.

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Patmos in the Reception History of the Apocalypse Mira, quae tandem scripsisti Librum in coelestium].103

The subtext would appear to be a celebration of how the emperor’s attempts to silence John were divinely frustrated, both in the ‘victory’ of John’s protection from the boiling oil,104 and in the transformation of his sentence of exile into a revelation of wonders for the benefit of those who read his book. This lengthy hymn continues with an appeal to John that those singing it may understand what is read—an indication that one function of the commemoration is to promote imitatio—before continuing the story by recounting Domitian’s death and John’s return to Ephesus. This same juxtaposition of themes of exile and unveiling, restriction and unrestricted access to another world, is attested in other texts, such as this 10th-century hymn from the Benedictine abbey of Moissac: He is sent forth by the Emperor to be kept by the island of Pathmos; there he sees mysteries from heaven illuminated, and narrates profound and lofty things, which he recorded mentally [Insula Pathmos teneri imperante promitur, Conspicit illic refulsa coelitus mysteria Et profunda, quae notavit mente, narrat ardua].105

The claim that he recorded this things mente rather than in writing may reflect the tradition that the actual composition of the Apocalypse took place not on Patmos but some time later. Similarly, a hymn of Konrad von Haimburg addresses John directly, reminding him of how ‘you escaped unharmed | from the vat of boiling oil | but on Pathmos you depicted [or ‘painted’] | the mysteries of the faith’ (Tu illaesus evasisti | Vas ferventis olei | Et in Pathmos depinxisti | Tu secreta fidei).106

103 Hymn 4, De sancto Johanne evangelista: Latin text in Blume and Dreves (eds) 1886–1922: III, 114. The word raptus echoes Paul’s description of his heavenly ascent at 2 Cor. 12:2, as well as the ascent of the male child at Rev. 12:5. 104 This is a double victory: both that of John’s faith in ‘martyrdom’, and, allegorically, of virginity ‘over the heat of sin and carnal desires’: Volfing 2001: 79–80. 105 Hymn 111, De S. Johanne evangelista: Latin text in Blume and Dreves (eds) 1886–1922: II, 82. 106 Hymn 21, De sancto Johanne evangelista: Latin text in Blume and Dreves (eds) 1886–1922: III, 53.

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A final example comes from a 14th-century Missal from York, for the Feast of St John before the Latin Gate: Here before the Latin Gate, as a spectacle in Rome, the boiling oil did not hurt him; how beautiful the miracle and certain the victory! [Hunc ante portam Latinam ad Romae spectacula oleum fervens non laesit; quam pulchra miracula et clara victoria!] On account of the unconquerable firmness of his oratory, snatched away by the anger of the Emperor Domitian while he underwent exile; [Propter insuperabilem eloquii constantiam107 Domitiani Caesaris raptus per iracundiam dum subit exsilia;] In Patmos he wrote an apocalypse concerning the Church: concerning its present state, and the glory of the saints in the heavenly court. [In Patmos apocalypsim scripsit de ecclesia, De statu eius praesenti et sanctorum gloria In caelesti curia].108

Although the participle raptus here seems to have a primarily negative sense (referring to John being ‘snatched away’ to exile), it retains a certain ambiguity, for the same word in Albert of Prague’s hymn cited above is used of his ‘rapture’ into heaven to see heavenly marvels (cf. 2 Cor. 12:2; Rev. 12:5). Furthermore, the Apocalypse that John ‘wrote’ on Patmos is interpreted ecclesially, which in a liturgical context underscores the relationship between the seer, now himself sharing in the ‘glory of the saints’, and the congregation, participating through worship in the liturgy of the heavenly court. 107

For this phrase, see Bede (in Chapter 3) and Bruno of Segni (in Chapter 4). Hymn 246, De S. Johanne ad Portam Latinam: Blume and Dreves (eds) 1886–1922: XL, 218. 108

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For ordinary Christians, however, Latin hymns and sequences may have had a less direct appeal than sermons and homilies. As Jeffrey Hamburger notes: ‘Sermons were the principal vehicle by which lessons were drawn from the daily liturgy.’109 Indeed, although many were delivered in Latin, especially in monastic contexts, some were preached in the vernacular. An English example are the sermons in John Mirk’s Festiale. Mirk, an Augustinian priest from Shropshire, wrote a collection of sermons in English during the 1380s, aimed at priests without sufficient education to compose their own. The quantity of surviving manuscripts and printed editions suggest that it was ‘the most widely read vernacular sermon collection of late-medieval England.’110 It was heavily dependent upon the Golden Legend, and represented an orthodox yet popular alternative to Lollardy. There is also a substantial corpus of German-language sermons, discussed by Annette Volfing.111 Although one cannot be sure that the published texts represent precisely what ordinary congregations would have heard (many tend to be ‘preachers’ aids’ rather than complete scripts, whilst others may be preachers’ revisions of texts originally delivered orally, or sermons reconstructed by disciples), they provide some indication of key themes and concerns. At least up to the 14th century, sermons on St John tend to have a biographical and hagiographical emphasis; after this time, more mystical and philosophical concerns begin to dominate. Volfing shows how the focus on biography, including John’s miracles, in the homiletic tradition serves both to establish John’s credentials as intercessor for the faithful, and to allow the possibility of imitatio on the part of the hearers.112 This tropological interest in the Patmos vision is exemplified in a Middle High German sermon for the feast of St John before the Latin Gate, which urges the possibility of access to heaven for those Christians who pray for a purified heart: Our hearts should be willing and hungry to see the face of our Lord and to come to contemplate his divinity, which St John the Evangelist saw with many pure thoughts [vnser herz sol willich sin vnd hvngerich zesehen daz antlutze vnsers herren vnd zechomen zedem anpliche siner gotheit, di sant Iohannes evangelista sach mit vil rainen gedanchen].113

The sermon goes on to cite Rev. 4:1, describing the opening of heaven and the ascent of John, to make a similar appeal: 109

Hamburger 2002: 129. Ford 2006: 9. Printed editions represent a revised, abbreviated version directed to a more educated readership. 111 Volfing 2001: 101–30. 112 Volfing 2001: 103, 106–9. 113 Volfing 2001: 115. 110

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. . . and ask him, who has created us, to purify our hearts, so that we might reach that place where St John was, when he wrote this. He said, ‘I looked, and there in heaven a door stood open’ [vnd biten in, daz vnser herz von im gereinet werde, der vns hat geschaffen, daz wir dar chomen mvssen, da sant Iohannes was, do er dise rede schreip. Er sprach: ‘uido ostium apertum in celo’ ].

John Mirk’s Festiale Sermon for the Feast of St John emphasizes John’s drinking of the well of wisdom in Christ’s breast at the Last Supper, although it focuses less on the Gospel John leaves behind as the product of this spiritual insight than on John’s miraculous ability to read the thoughts of others, and his miracles and preaching more widely.114 It is in this context that Patmos is mentioned, as a place of exile for John’s refusal to desist from preaching: And for he was olde and wolde not leue to preche ye worde of god/the Emperour exyled Johan alone in to the yle of Pathmos/& the god shewed hym ye appocalipsis of the Worlde/and of the daye of dome/and as he sawe it he wrote it in grete informacyon of holy chyrche. But after whan the Emperour was deed John was called agayne to ye cyte of Ephesye/for there he was bysshop . . .115

Mirk emphasizes that John was ‘alone’ in his exile, perhaps intimating that this solitary existence provided an apt context for ‘ye appocalipsis of the Worlde and of the daye of dome’ he was privileged to receive.

CO NCLUSION This wide-ranging chapter has set out the main lines of Western interpretation of Patmos in the first half of the second millennium. This period is marked by considerable creativity as well as exegetical sophistication. On the one hand, this has made categorization more difficult, particularly as different types of readings can be found in the work of the same interpreter. On the other, this complexity has accentuated the rich possibilities in what appears superficially a straightforward biblical text. In hagiographical texts, such as the Golden Legend, the story of John’s Patmos sojourn is recounted as much for edification and imitation as for information, a form of exegesis mirrored in liturgical usage. Patmos functions for many as a lens through which the contemporary call to contemplation may be viewed, emphasizing heavenly mysteries in order to draw analogies between Patmos and the interpreter’s own life of prayer. For some, this manifests itself in a general application to the Church and the Christian life, realizing the potential of John’s self-description as frater vester. For others, the connection 114

Ford 2006: 128.

115

Mirk 1528.

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with Patmos is located in a more specific pattern of life. John, for example, is presented as a type of the monastic, or the contemplative, and Patmos as a figure of the monastery or the life of solitude. The particular actualization in the life of St Francis, even if this is a ‘second-hand’ actualization in the perception of one particular Franciscan commentator, provides a striking example of the potential of this text to generate fresh visionary experience. Finally, a few commentators exploit the potential of Rev. 10 for illuminating the contemporary implications of the command issued to John on Patmos to ‘preach again’, a reading invested with particular significance for the Order of Preachers, the Dominicans.

5 Patmos in Eastern Traditions from the 5th Century I N T R O D U C TI O N The justification for treating Eastern interpretations separately lies in the clear divergence between Greek and Latin commentary traditions after the early patristic period, and in distinctive Greek apocryphal Acts which will influence the liturgical, hagiographical, and iconographical traditions about John in Eastern, especially Byzantine Christianity, up to the present.1 Eastern commentaries on Revelation are far fewer than in the West, a reflection in part of continued Eastern doubts over canonicity,2 and Revelation’s absence from liturgical lectionaries. Primary attention will be paid here to Greek traditions, given that these are more readily accessible, although there will also be consideration of traditions preserved by the Oriental Orthodox churches (Syriac, Armenian, Coptic, and Ethiopic).3 Paralleling the activity of Latin commentators in the 6th century, Greek Apocalypse commentators such as Oecumenius and especially Andreas of Caesarea set the pattern for later Orthodox exegesis of Revelation. In addition, a distinctive set of apocryphal Acts, attributed to John’s scribe Prochorus, emerges at the beginning of this period (probably the 5th century), which will have an abiding influence on perceptions of Patmos in the East. Western Christendom, however, will be largely ignorant of these Prochorus Acts (and the figure of Prochorus himself), at least until the 13th century, being influenced instead by parallel biographical texts such as the Passio and the Virtutes.

1 Chronological divisions appropriate for the West (e.g. Middle Ages) are unhelpful when it comes to categorizing Eastern interpretations, given that for the Orthodox the ‘patristic age’ extends well into the ‘early medieval’ period: Blower 2009: 172. 2 See Stonehouse 1929. 3 The Syrian church seems unaware of the Apocalypse until at least the 5th century, while the earliest attested Armenian translation, that of Nerses of Lambron, dates to the late 12th century: Gwynn 1897; Wainwright 1993: 33.

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PATMOS AS NARRATIVE WORLD: THE ACTS OF JOHN BY PROCHORUS Within the developing biographical tradition about John in Eastern Christianity, the Acts of John by Prochorus deserve a prominent place.4 This apocryphal text (also known as the Travels of St John the Theologian, —æ  Ø F ±ª ı
ø ı F Ł ºª ı) is perhaps the most extensive example of the reception of Rev. 1:9 in the East, developing the brief statement that ‘I, John, . . . was on the island called Patmos’ into an elaborate novella describing in detail John’s stay, calculated as lasting fifteen years.5 The account in the Prochorus Acts of the writing of the Fourth Gospel on Patmos, an act of divine dictation, has provided the model for icons of St John since the 10th or early 11th century, with both Greek and Russian examples surviving.6 (This iconographical tradition will be examined separately, alongside other artistic examples, in Chapter 7.) The role of Prochorus, one of the seven deacons of Acts 6:5, as John’s disciple, companion, and scribe, is firmly embedded in Orthodox Johannine hagiography. Moreover, contemporary pilgrims to Patmos are struck by the extent to which the Prochorus Acts and their oral afterlife have shaped the imaginative landscape. As one local historian puts it: ‘This text is the source from which all local, oral tradition concerning St John’s stay on the island derives.’7 The extensive manuscript evidence points to the widespread popularity in the East of these more ‘orthodox’ Acts, as opposed to the ‘heterodox’ Acts of John attributed to Leucius. Junod and Kaestli claim to have located more than a hundred and fifty manuscripts, preserving the text in Latin, Coptic, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Armenian, as well as the original Greek.8 The precise date of writing remains a matter of scholarly debate, with suggestions ranging from the 4th to the 7th centuries, the terminus ad quem provided by its use in the Chronicon Paschale of 630. Junod and Kaestli, followed by Culpepper, opt for the 5th century, largely on the grounds of vocabulary, and there seems little reason to dispute their conclusion.9 Nor is the relationship of the Prochorus Acts with the original Acts of John (AJ) straightforward. Zahn and Lipsius both concluded that the author of the former certainly knew and used the AJ. Junod and Kaestli, however, come to a different conclusion, finding only two episodes manifesting even a loose

4 5 6 7 8 9

Greek text in Zahn 1880. Probably because this is the length of Domitian’s reign (81–96). Ševčenko 1989: 169. Papadopoulos 1977: 9. Junod and Kaestli 1982: 110; for further bibliographical information, see Elliott 1993: 348. Culpepper 2000: 206; Junod and Kaestli 1983: II, 748–9.

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connection between the two texts.10 Resolution of this scholarly debate is not vital to our purpose, however, given AJ’s lack of interest in Patmos. By contrast, the Prochorus Acts are significant both for the amount of space they devote to John’s stay on Patmos and for their substantial departure from, or ignorance of, previous patristic traditions. On the latter point, John’s exile is dated not to the reign of Domitian, as in the dominant patristic tradition, nor even to that of Claudius (following Epiphanius), but to the later reign of Trajan (98–117), or, if one adopts the lectio difficilior, Hadrian (117–138).11 The Acts are also innovative in the role they give to their implied author, Prochorus, hitherto unknown in traditions about John the apostle. Furthermore, the author exploits the absence of traditions concerning John’s Patmos sojourn,12 filling the gap with a highly imaginative novella in which Patmos emerges as a self-contained narrative world.13 The text was evidently written without direct knowledge of Patmos, its size, geography, and topography.14 Places are mentioned (Tychios, Proclos, Botrys, Lithou Bole, Myrinousa, Phlogios, Karos) which bear no obvious connection to actual locations on the island.15 Distances between some of these are impossible for an island no more than ten miles in length and varying in width from six miles to a few hundred yards. Myrinousa, for example, is fifty miles from Phora, and Karos about thirteen miles from Myrinousa. As Zahn notes, the Patmos of the author’s imagination seems more the size of Sicily or Cyprus than the Aegean island in question.16 Similar historical problems are raised by the description of the lengthy sea journey from Ephesus to Patmos: leaving aside days spent on shore, the voyage takes over a week, surprising for a distance of approximately fifty miles.17

10 The relevant episodes are the death of the apostle, and the polemic against the worshippers of Ephesian Artemis: Junod and Kaestli 1982: 111. 11 The discrepancy between the Prochorus Acts and other sources on this question may account for the unusual reading in the Oration in Praise of St John the Evangelist by Nicetas Paphlagon (late 9th or early 10th century), which speaks of John’s relegation to Patmos by ‘wicked emperors’ ("ò Æغø Œø): Nicetas Paphlagon, ed. Migne 1862: 117–19. 12 ‘l’absence totale de traditions sur les circonstances du séjour de Jean à Patmos’: Junod and Kaestli 1983: II, 741. 13 The concept of ‘narrative world’ is borrowed from New Testament narrative criticism, where it describes the world created by the text. 14 Given this ignorance on the part of the author, Zahn, followed by Junod and Kaestli, has proposed a Syrian, perhaps Antiochene, or Palestinian provenance: Zahn 1880: lx; Junod and Kaestli 1983: II, 745. 15 The Prochorus Acts name the main city of Patmos ‘Phora’, a name not dissimilar to the current name of the town around the Monastery, Chora; Geil, describing a visit to Patmos at the end of the 19th century, also refers to Chora as ‘the city of Phora, formerly called Patino, or Patmos-town’: Geil 1897: 18. 16 ‘Von dieser kleinen Insel hat Prochorus eine Vorstellung, welche auf Sicilien oder Cypern besser passen würde’: Zahn 1880: lii. 17 Paul’s sea journey from Chios to Samos, a similar distance, takes just one day (Acts 20:15).

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The Narrative of the Prochorus Acts The Prochorus Acts18 begin with the apostles gathered at Gethsemane, to divide up the inhabited world for the preaching of the gospel. Asia falls by lot to John, and the Acts describe his dangerous sea journey from Antioch to Marmareon near Ephesus on the coast of Asia (where he is reunited with Prochorus after having been lost at sea), reminiscent both of the biblical story of Jonah and Paul’s shipwreck in the canonical Acts (Jonah 1:4–2:10; Acts 27:13–44). Several chapters describe the deeds and miracles of John in Ephesus, including the destruction of the temple of Artemis and the conversion of pagan priests. At the instigation of the citizens of Ephesus, John and Prochorus are exiled by the emperor Trajan (or Hadrian) to Patmos. The miraculous continues on the sea journey to the island, resulting in the baptism of ten officers responsible for guarding John and his disciple. At this stage in the narrative,19 an alternative interpretation of Øa e ºª  F Ł F ŒÆd c Ææ ıæÆ
Å F is offered to trump that of exile. The soldiers express willingness to let John go; he, however, regards it as the divine will that he be taken to Patmos as prisoner, on the basis of a vision (O ÆÆ) he had received three months earlier, in which Christ had addressed him thus: Go into Ephesus, because after three months you will go into exile to an island, which has great need of you [l Ø  ººa åæ ÇØ  ı]; you will be greatly tested [ØæÆŁ fiÅ], and you will sow many things [ ººa ŒÆ ÆæfiÅ] there.20

Trajan is less a persecutor of Christians than one player in a divinely orchestrated drama (like Domitian in some of the Western apocryphal lives). John will find himself on Patmos as a result of divine revelation, the word of God which spoke to him in a vision of Christ, heralding sufferings but also missionary success (the most obvious interpretation of  ººa ŒÆ ÆæfiÅ). The major part of the Prochorus Acts 21 describes the events of John’s fifteen year sojourn on Patmos, before his return with Prochorus to Ephesus, further events in that city, and an account (as in the ancient AJ and similar texts) of John’s death. The text shares with other apocryphal Acts a concern to elaborate the story of the protagonist, with particular focus on the miraculous,22 and on the victory of Christianity over paganism.23 Another important motif is John’s struggle with the forces of magic, exemplified in his eventual defeat 18

For a more detailed summary of the Prochorus Acts, see Culpepper 2000: 206–22. Zahn 1880: 46–56. 20 Greek text in Zahn 1880: 44, lines 13–15. 21 Zahn 1880: 56–162. 22 John performs several exorcisms and healings, including raising the dead: e.g. Zahn 1880: 57–64, 84–7, 105–10. 23 Notably his battle with the priests of Apollo and Dionysus, and the destruction of their temples, in the latter case killing twelve priests: Zahn 1880: 80–4, 127–8. 19

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of the god-like magician Kynops, John acting like Moses stretching out his hand to defeat the Amalekites (Exod. 17:11), thus leading to the imprisonment of Kynops in the depths of the sea.24 But our main interest is in the treatment of Patmos. We have already noted three distinctive features: the unusual dating of John’s exile to the reign of Trajan (or Hadrian); the explanation of Rev. 1:9 in terms of divine revelation, God’s word, and Christ’s testimony direct John to Patmos, Roman officials being simply vehicles of the divine will; finally, the central role accorded to Prochorus as John’s companion, ruling out an understanding of John’s sojourn on the island as that of a lone exile. Several further characteristics are also significant, however. The first relates to John’s evangelistic and baptismal activity, which is impressive indeed. Among his converts on the island are the island’s governor, Laurentius, and his unnamed successor, the proconsul Makrinos, and a military tribune. John also converts two representative pagan priests, of Apollo and Dio respectively, persuades a number of Jews (Karos the tanner; Philo, and his wife) of the truth of the gospel, and engages in mass baptisms, the consequence of his victories over paganism (three hundred at the destruction of Apollo’s temple and two hundred after that of Dionysus). The historical value of these precise details is doubtful. First, several of the stories are clearly modelled on the canonical Acts, where first Peter and then Paul have success with Roman officials (e.g. Acts 10:48; 13:12). Second, the late date of such traditions militates against authenticity; indeed, the motif of Christianity’s triumph over paganism better fits the author’s postConstantinian situation. Moreover, although oral traditions on Patmos identify two locations as John’s baptismal sites, the earliest inscriptional evidence for a Christian church there dates from the 4th century.25 Yet if the Prochorus Acts are not reliable as historical evidence, their imaginative reconstruction posits a scenario no less rooted in the ambiguous text of Revelation than alternatives commonly assumed by interpreters. John’s existence on Patmos is enhanced, not only by the presence of his disciple Prochorus, but by an emerging Christian community. The Prochorus Acts exploit the potential of an alternative reading of Øa e ºª  F Ł F ŒÆd c Ææ ıæÆ
Å F which is added to existing layers of interpretation: namely, that John goes to Patmos in order to preach the word of God and bear testimony to Jesus, a mission which he accomplishes with considerable success. It raises the imaginative possibility that John’s ecstasy ‘in the Spirit on the Lord’s day’ (Rev. 1:10), far from being the lone experience of an isolated seer, took place within a communal act of liturgical worship. 24 Zahn 1880: 90–105. Local tradition on Patmos identifies an underwater rock in the harbour at Skala as the petrified body of Kynops. 25 E.g. Hadjinicolaou and Papadimitriou 1971: 22; Papadopoulos 1977: 9.

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Nor is the world of Patmos created by the Prochorus Acts lacking in verisimilitude, despite its augmentation of the island’s size. Arguably it has a better claim to authenticity than the desolate setting typically imagined, inspired for example by the often-repeated statement of Victorinus that John was condemned in metallo, ‘to the mines’. The Acts portray an island with several centres of population, thriving pagan temples, and a hippodrome.26 This challenge to the widespread perception of 1st-century Patmos as a cultural and political backwater is confirmed by surviving archaeological and inscriptional evidence from the period (see Appendix 2). Although it was a small island, its political dependence on the mainland city of Miletus, for which it functioned as a defensive fortress island (çæ æØ ), meant that the population of Patmos was numerous enough to support a gymnasium, and cults of the goddess Artemis and her brother Apollo. Indeed, it is striking that John’s clash with the priests of Apollo, and the destruction of Apollo’s temple, is central to Prochorus’s portrayal of Patmos in the 1st century.27 Paradoxically, however, the Prochorus Acts contain no other allusion to, still less any quotation from, the Apocalypse, despite their dependence on John’s brief autobiographical statement at Rev. 1:9. There is certainly no suggestion that John received his visions or wrote his book there. One possible explanation relates to Eastern uncertainty about the authorship of Revelation (already raised by Dionysius of Alexandria in the 3d century: see Eusebius, H.E. 7.25) and ambivalence with regard to its canonical status (a matter of concern to Eusebius in the fourth: H.E. 3.25).28 This ambivalence can still be found as late as the 9th century, where Revelation is listed among the ‘disputed’ books in the Stichometry of Nicephorus of Constantinople.29 It impinged on the liturgical lectionary and the decoration of Orthodox churches, and also helps to account for the sparse Greek tradition of commentaries on the Apocalypse.30

A Typological Reading in the Prochorus Acts: Patmos and Sinai Instead, the Prochorus Acts sideline the Apocalypse in favour of the Fourth Gospel, in a lengthy passage which concludes the Patmos section of the 26 Archaeological evidence for a hippodrome has been found on Patmos, in the area between the hill of Kastelli and the harbour of Skala. 27 Haussoullier 1902: 124–43; Saffrey 1975: 385–417. For inscriptional evidence, see also McCabe and Plunkett 1985. According to Fougère and Fougère 1975: 31, the ancient town of Patmos would have had the capacity for a population of between 12,000 and 13,000 (although they too follow tradition in assuming that it would have been depopulated in John’s day, serving instead as a ‘place of deportation’). 28 Ševčenko 1989: 172. 29 The final canonical acceptance of the Apocalypse in Byzantine Christianity may be as late as the 14th century. 30 Willoughby 1940: 89–100.

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narrative. Central to this scene is the assertion that the Gospel was received by John and transcribed by Prochorus on Patmos, representing an unprecedented challenge to the dominant patristic tradition linking the Gospel with Ephesus. Before his departure for Ephesus on the accession of a new emperor, John is persuaded by the Patmian Christians to write. He and Prochorus go outside the city to a location called ˚Æ  ÆØ (‘Place of Rest’), where there is a small mountain (Zæ  ØŒæ). John prays and fasts for three days, before sending Prochorus into the city to obtain papyrus and ink. On his return, he is again sent to the city for a further two days. On his second return, Prochorus is told to take up the papyrus and ink, and stand at John’s right hand. The narrative continues as follows: Now there was great lightning and thunder [I æÆc ªlÅ ŒÆd æ  ], so that the mountain shook, and I fell on my face to the ground and remained dead [ŒÆd Æ Kªg Kd æø  Kd c ªB ŒÆd ØÆ Œæ ].31 But John laid his hand on me and raised me up; then he said to me: ‘Sit at my right on the ground.’ I did so, and again he prayed, and after the prayer he said to me: ‘Prochorus, my child, write what you hear from my mouth on the papyrus. Then, opening his mouth, John, standing and looking up into heaven, said: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . ’ Consequently he spoke all these things while standing; and I, sitting, wrote them down.32

After two days and six hours of dictation, John and Prochorus return to the city with the papyrus containing ‘the divine words’, which is then copied onto parchment, to be preserved and read out among the churches of the island. The papyrus text of the Gospel, meanwhile, is to be taken to Ephesus, for which the two eventually depart after a further six months visiting other villages on Patmos.33 The parallels between this episode and the story of Moses’ ascent to Sinai in Exod. 19 are unmistakable. John ascends a mountain (Zæ ), albeit a small one.34 The reference to I æÆc ªºÅ ŒÆd æ  parallels the ‘noises and lightnings’ (çøÆd ŒÆd I æÆÆd) ‘on the morning of the third day’ at Exod. 19:16 LXX (Prochorus has just returned from the city after two days). Similarly the shaking of the mountain recalls that of Sinai at Exod. 19:18 in the MT (although the LXX at this point focuses on the amazement of the people: ŒÆd K  Å A › ºÆe çæÆ) Following hints in the Prologue of John (John 1:17), the reception of the Fourth Gospel is linked typologically with the Exodus narrative of Moses receiving the Decalogue. Extending the 31

These words have strong echoes of Rev. 1:17: Æ æe f Æ ÆP F ‰ Œæ. Greek text in Zahn 1880: 155–6. 33 For catalogues of apostles emphasizing the writing of the Gospel, and occasionally the Apocalypse, on Patmos, see Schermann 1907: 257–8: texts A, C, ms. C1 de B, G, and H. 34 Not inappropriate for an island such as Patmos, the highest peak of which is 269 metres, compared with 2,285 metres for Gebel Musa or Mount Sinai: Becker 2008: 81. 32

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typology, in a manner which shifts the Mosaic significance from Christ to his apostle John, the mountain on Patmos becomes a new Mount Sinai, a mountain of divine revelation on which the completed revelation is received. Nor is this an isolated example of Mosaic typology in the Prochorus Acts: such a connection has already been established in the tale of the defeat of Kynops, where John holds up his hands in a manner reminiscent of Moses’ victory over Amalek in Exod. 17. Although not setting up a direct Sinai-Patmos typology, other apocryphal biographical texts also highlight John’s role as a Moses figure. The Story of John the Son of Zebedee (dated by Lipsius to between the early 5th and the early 6th century), preserves a tradition that John lived to the age of a hundred and twenty, Moses’ age at his death (Deut. 34:7).35 Having described John writing the Gospel in Ephesus for Peter and Paul, the author continues: And John the Pure sat in that hut [at Ephesus] winter and summer, until a hundred and twenty years had gone over him. Then his Lord hid him in that place as He hid Moses in the mountain of Moâb.36

Similarly, The Death of the Apostle John or Homily of Pseudo-Chrysostom (surviving in Greek and Arabic, its earliest exemplar being from the 9th or 10th century) finds a Mosaic typology in the story of John’s death in Ephesus.37 The Arabic version reads thus: The saint told his disciples to dig a grave for him. And while they were digging, he prayed for them, and stretched out his body in the grave; and yielded up his spirit to his Creator. And on the morrow his disciples went to the grave, and found nothing in it. And the Pure One was lifted up to his Beloved, the Christ, like Moses. For God said unto Moses, ‘Go up to the mountain, for there thou shalt die.’ And after his death the children of Israel sought for his body; and they found it not.38

As in the Prochorus Acts, although this time in Ephesus, John also imitates Moses’ victory over Amalek by holding up his hands (Exod. 17:11–13), causing the temple of Artemis in Ephesus to be thrown down.39 Finally, the Mosaic motif is reflected in a gospel preface attributed to Epiphanius, found in some Byzantine gospel books, which claims that John wrote the Gospel on Patmos, and then on his return to Asia ‘wrote the decalogue’ (ªæÆł c Œaº ª ).40 In contrast to the Prochorus Acts which view the Gospel as a second Decalogue, the latter seems to be a reference 35 36 37 38 39 40

Smith Lewis 1904: xxxiii: according to Gen. 6:3, the maximum age for human beings. Smith Lewis 1904: 167. Because of his Assumption, John is also compared to Elijah: see Culpepper 2000: 238. Smith Lewis 1904: 171; cf. Deut. 32:49–50. Culpepper 2000: 239. Nelson 1980: 7.

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to the Apocalypse, although the first Letter of John, with its ‘old commandment’ to love one another (1 John 2:7), is a further possibility. Later Byzantine writers pick up on and develop this Moses-John typology, with its implicit pairing of Sinai with Patmos, in discussions of St John. One example is Simeon Metaphrastes, probably writing in the late 10th century. In his ‘Remembrance on St John the Theologian’,41 Simeon first locates Patmos geographically within the Sporades island group (Y ØÆ H  æø  ø), and describes John’s missionary success there: After a little while, the residents of the island ( ƒ B   ı æ ØŒ Ø) named the son of thunder as saviour and protector, converted to observance of the law [N P Æ], and assented to piety [ B fi P Æ fi ].42

He then proceeds to relate the writing of the Gospel on Patmos, with no reference to the writing of the Apocalypse, in a manner suggesting dependence on the Prochorus Acts. He knows of the tradition of Prochorus as John’s disciple, and the connection between John and Moses, including the raising of Moses’ hands against the Amalekites. He mentions the mountain, and describes the thunder accompanying the opening words of the Gospel as they are dictated. He then describes John’s descent from the mountain in terms which explicitly connect it to Sinai: Late in the evening John came down the mountain [Ie F Zæ ı Œ ØØ ›
øÅ], having been given the new law, just as Moses, the one who saw God [› Ł Å], long ago was given the tablets . . . 43

The juxtaposition of Sinai with Patmos, and Moses with John, is even more explicit here than in the earlier Prochorus Acts. The Gospel, with its ‘new commandment’ (K ºc ŒÆØc 13:34), is e ŒÆØe   superseding the old law received by Moses on the two tablets with writing on the front and the back.44 Simeon probably takes his cue here from the statement in the Prologue to the Gospel: ‘The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ’ (John 1:17). Several centuries later, Nicephorus Callistus (c.1256–c.1335) describes in his Ecclesiastical History how John preached in Asia, destroyed the temple of Artemis in Ephesus, and was then exiled by the emperor Domitian ‘in the fourteenth year of his reign’ to Patmos, ‘where, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he thundered in a lofty manner his Gospel, and also his holy and 41 On the pagan antecedents to the title Ł ºª & in Ephesus and its vicinity, and its relationship to the imperial cult, see Brent 1999. 42 Simeon Metaphrastes, ed. Migne 1864: 689–92. 43 Greek text in Simeon Metaphrastes, ed. Migne 1864: 692–3. 44 The latter phrase (ŒÆ ƪªæÆ ÆØ K I# æø H æH Ł ŒÆd Ł Exod. 32:15 LXX) already suggests links with the Lamb’s scroll of Rev. 5:1, which is delivered to John as a word of prophecy in Rev. 10.

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inspired Apocalypse’ (
‚ŁÆ c ŒÆd e ŒÆ
ÆP e ¯Pƪª ºØ  KıŁd fiH ±ªØfiø —Æ Ø "łÅºH I æ Å· Iººa c ŒÆd c ƒæa ÆP F ŒÆd Ł 
` ŒºıłØ).45 The verb I æ Å used of John’s proclamation of his Gospel echoes the Sinaitic ‘thundering’ of the Prochorus Acts, as well as the name of ‘sons of thunder’ given by Jesus to James and John (ıƒ  æ  B: Mark 3:17). The further reference to the Apocalypse suggests knowledge of the expanded Prochorus Acts (see below), although with no explicit reference to the cave. Other Byzantine witnesses know of the connection between Prochorus and the transcribing of the Gospel on Patmos, without exploiting the typological potential of Sinai. An Athens manuscript of the Gospel of John noted by Robert Nelson has the following subscription, perhaps dependent upon visual images of St John dictating to his scribe: The end of the Gospel according to John; it was written by Prochoros, his disciple, on the island of Patmos in the 32nd year after the Ascension of Christ [KªæçÅ Øa —æå æ ı ÆŁÅ F ÆP F  — fiø B  fiø  a åæ ı º B XæØ F aƺ łø].46

There is an identical subscription in a late 11th- or early 12th-century Gospel Book in Naples. Both give an early dating to the Patmos sojourn and the composition of John’s Gospel (the early to mid-60s).

PATMOS IN THE GREEK COMMENTARY TRADITION While the Prochorus Acts exhibit significant imaginative creativity in deriving a whole novella from Revelation’s brief reference to Patmos, the Greek commentary tradition is rather more restrained.

Oecumenius One of the earliest is the commentary of Oecumenius,47 probably to be dated to the 6th century, although scholarship is divided as to whether Oecumenius

45

Nicephorus Callistus, ed. Migne 1865: 869. Nelson 1980: 86. English translation from Oecumenius, ed. Suggit 2006; Greek text in Oecumenius, ed. Hoskier 1928; also Oecumenius, ed. de Groote 1999. 46 47

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was writing after the Fifth Ecumenical Council in 553 (even as late as c.600),48 or a Monophysite writing in the first half of the century. The weight of evidence would appear to be in favour of the earlier dating, as argued recently by Lamoreaux.49 This would make him an exact contemporary of Primasius and Apringius in the West, although his sources and interests are different.50 In commenting on Rev. 1:9, Oecumenius continues the biographical interest of earlier patristic writers, specifically referring to Eusebius’s Chronicon, although he shows no knowledge of the developments in the Prochorus Acts. His rather restrained tone, reflecting an almost antiquarian interest, contrasts with the more engaged interpretations of Tertullian and Victorinus which were written against the backdrop of imperial persecution: He says ‘on account of Jesus’; for this is what being ‘in Jesus’ means. And on account of his word and testimony, to which I testified when I proclaimed his gospel [m Kªg KÆæ æÅÆ e ¯Pƪª ºØ  ÆP F ŒÅæÆ], I was (he says) banished on Patmos [KæØ  K B fi П fiø]. That he suffered this Eusebius narrates in his Canonical Chronicle in the time of the emperor Domitian.51

Oecumenius also cites from Eusebius’s Historia Ecclesiastica (referring to Domitian’s sentencing of John to Patmos), in his defence of Revelation’s apostolic authorship. Finally, the exile tradition is repeated in his comments on the phrase ‘hour of trial’ at Rev. 3:10, which he interprets as Domitian’s persecution of Christians as a second Nero, again citing the testimony of Eusebius. It is here that he reveals the Patmos of his imagination: This, too, was when the blessed evangelist was condemned to live on Patmos, a small and desolate island [Å  æÅ  ŒÆd æÆå].52

Oecumenius’s description of Patmos as ‘small and desolate’ is in sharp contrast to the depiction of the island in the Prochorus Acts, and indeed to the 1st-century reality.53 Nevertheless, like Victorinus’s reference to ‘the mines’, such a statement has impacted significantly on the imaginative reception of Patmos. His choice of the word æÅ  is especially noteworthy, given its biblical associations with Christ’s temptation in the Judean desert, or 48

Oecumenius, ed. Hoskier 1928: 4. On the grounds of the identification of this Oecumenius with a correspondent of Severus of Antioch, and clear Monophysite statements in Oecumenius’ scholia on the Pauline epistles; Lamoreaux proposes that Oecumenius’ reference to ‘more than five hundred years’ having passed be dated, not from John’s writing the Apocalypse, but from the coming of Christ: Lamoreaux 1998; for a defence of the later dating, see de Groote 1996. 50 Oecumenius, ed. Suggit 2006: 9–13, 20. He explicitly records indebtedness to Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, Methodius, Cyril of Alexandria, and Hippolytus. 51 English translation from Oecumenius, ed. Suggit 2006: 27–8; Greek text in Oecumenius, ed. de Groote 1999: 74–5. 52 English translation from Oecumenius, ed. Suggit 2006: 48; Greek text in Oecumenius, ed. de Groote 1999: 98. 53 Saffrey 1975. 49

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divine revelation in the wilderness of Sinai, as well as contemporary monastic associations.

Andreas of Caesarea More influential than Oecumenius’s commentary is that of Andreas of Caesarea in Cappadocia,54 variously dated to the second half of the 6th century and the beginning of the 7th.55 Given that John Chrysostom left no homilies on the Apocalypse, Andreas holds an important place in Orthodox Apocalypse exegesis to the present day. It has been estimated that nearly a third of surviving Greek manuscripts of the Apocalypse reproduce his commentary.56 Andreas’s comments on Patmos are brief. Although he refers to John’s relegatio, no emperor is explicitly named. Instead, in a passage which allows John to speak in the first person as ‘your brother, being also a co-participant in the tribulations on account of Christ’ (’¯ªg b, –  Iºçe, . . . "H J, ŒÆd ıªŒ Øøe K ÆE Øa æØ e ŁºłØ), Andreas privileges the apocalyptic mysteries which his relegation to the island allowed him to see: Being condemned to live on the island of Patmos on account of the witness of Jesus, I will announce to you the mysteries seen by me on it [ a øæÆ Æ  Ø K ÆP fiB ı æØÆ].57

This shift to the first person, addressing the readers in the second person plural, creates an immediacy which links John’s dwelling on the island with their present experience, reinforced by another statement placed on the lips of John that he is ‘credible’ or ‘worthy of belief ’ (IØØ ), or has ‘acquired trustworthiness among you’. It reflects a pattern of exegesis, derived from Origen, whereby the Apocalypse is less a prophecy of things to come, or of events of the past, than a drama portraying the current struggles of the Church, the body of the victorious Christ. This underlying pattern is still there, despite hints that Andreas is correcting certain Origenist tendencies in Oecumenius’s commentary.58 Indeed, it contrasts with the rather more detached tone of the latter’s comments on this passage.

54 Greek text in Andreas of Caesarea, ed. Migne 1863; also Andreas of Caesarea, ed. Schmid 1955; English translation in Andreas of Caesarea, ed. Constantinou 2011. 55 See Oecumenius, ed. Suggit 2006: 3, for the later dating, thus making him dependent on Oecumenius. For a very early date in the late 5th century, see Collins 1976: 169. 56 H. R. Willoughby 1940: I, 14; see Taushev and Rose 1995. 57 English translation from Andreas of Caesarea, ed. Constantinou 2011: 59–60; Greek text in Andreas of Caesarea, ed. Migne 1863: 225. 58 Daley 2009: 122–4.

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Arethas One of Andreas’s successors as Bishop of Caesarea, Arethas (c.900), also wrote a commentary on the Apocalypse, which shows dependence on Andreas’s text.59 Like Andreas, he emphasizes John’s brotherhood with fellow Christians and their common participation in ‘tribulations’ (’`ºçe Æı e ŒÆd Œ Øøe H Łºłø), and that he was ‘condemned to dwell on the island of Patmos’ (—   c B  NŒE ŒÆ ÆŒŒæŁÆØ). He goes further than Andreas in emphasizing the hostile character of John’s stay: it was prompted by the ‘persecutors of piety’ ("e H ØøŒ H . . . B P Æ). As a result he was found worthy to witness what he saw and heard on the island of revelation (for this he uses the word IØØ , ‘credible’ or ‘worthy of belief ’, borrowed from Andreas). Like Oecumenius, Arethas also derives the tradition of relegation by Domitian from the Chronicle of Eusebius, highlighting the prominence of the latter in the Byzantine tradition. However, whereas Oecumenius explains the banishment as a consequence of John’s preaching the gospel, Arethas interprets Øa e ºª  F ¨ F to mean that it was the writing of John’s Gospel text which led to John’s exile: ‘On account of the word of God’: He says ‘the word of God and the testimony’: the Gospel which he wrote [ e ¯Pƪª ºØ  n ªæÆł]. Eusebius Pamphilus states, in his Chronicle, that he was exiled on the island of Patmos by Domitian.60

THE CAVE TRADITION: ADDITION TO THE PROCHORUS ACTS A later interpolation into the Prochorus Acts clearly represents an attempt to address the original’s lack of interest in the Apocalypse itself. It describes the composition of the Apocalypse on Patmos, modelled in both form and content on the original account of the dictation of the Gospel. The earliest Greek manuscripts containing this interpolation date from the 11th to the 13th centuries,61 and it is unknown to Oecumenius, Andreas, and Simeon Metaphrastes. However, its earlier provenance is attested by Coptic and Armenian versions from as early as the 9th century, and it is known to Niketas, Archbishop of Salonica, in the early 11th century. 59

Arethas, ed. Migne 1863: 513–14; see also Arethas, ed. Schmid 1936. Greek text in Arethas, ed. Migne 1863: 513. Moscow, Historical Museum, Synod. 159; Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Gr. 1176; Zahn 1880: 184 lists the following: N (Neander p. 654–8), P3, m3 (Amphil. P. 64 sq.). 60 61

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The said passage is inserted into the text of the Prochorus Acts (at Zahn 160, line 5) between the story of Euchares, priest of Dio, and the account of John’s farewell to the brethren in Patmos before returning to Ephesus. As in the earlier description of the composition of the Fourth Gospel, John and Prochorus go out of the city to a ‘quiet place’ (K fiø ıåÆ ØŒfiH). Instead of a mountain, they find a cave (BºÆØ ) containing water. Prochorus returns to the city to eat with the brethren, while John remains in the cave for ten days, fasting. On the tenth day, a heavenly voice addresses John, commanding him to remain in the cave for another ten days, with the promise of the revelation of ‘many great secrets’ (ŒÆd I ŒÆºıçŁ  Æ  Ø ı æØÆ  ººa ŒÆd ªºÆ K fiH fiø  fiø). After another ten days of fasting, John falls into ecstasy in which he sees ‘many great mighty deeds, and an angel of God explaining to him what he had seen and heard’. He then commands Prochorus to return to the city for papyrus and ink. On his return, John tells him to write whatever comes from his mouth. John speaks and Prochorus transcribes his words for two days, before returning to the city to the house of Sosipatros (in the episode describing the writing of the Gospel, they return to the house of Sosipatros and his mother Procliane). On the next day, John asks for parchment, and Prochorus makes copies of the Apocalypse. The book is then read out by Prochorus to the assembled church, and the copy on parchment is given to them, while Prochorus and John retain the original text written on papyrus.62 As well as rehabilitating the Apocalypse into the biography of John, this passage is significant for the introduction of the cave into the Patmos tradition. This will become a regular feature of Byzantine iconography, particularly in the 14th and 15th centuries. It is also reflected in the identification of a cave on Patmos itself in the late 11th century. The precise reason for the cave’s appearance is unclear from the text itself. In the biblical tradition, caves function in three ways: as burial places; as places of refuge and hiding; as places associated with divine revelation. The first type is reflected in the Cave of Machpelah, the tomb of the patriarchs and matriarchs (e.g. Gen. 23:9; 49:29). Later Jewish tradition claims that this cave was the burial-place of Adam and Eve, with a sweet scent pervading it, and that it was guarded by angels, who kept a perpetual fire burning.63 Second, caves serve as refuges for the five kings fleeing from Joshua (Josh. 10:16), for David hiding from Saul (1 Sam. 22:1), and for a band of prophets threatened by Jezebel (1 Kgs 18:4). Similarly, Hebrews speaks of those of whom the world was not worthy, who ‘wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground’ (Heb. 11:38). In his commentary on Hebrews, Harold Attridge links the juxtaposition of ‘mountains’ and ‘caves’

62

Text in Zahn 1880: 184–5.

63

Ginzberg 2001: 137–8.

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with the hiding places of the Israelites at Judg. 6:2 and the refuges of the Maccabees at 2 Macc. 10:6 (cf. 1 Macc. 2:28; 2 Macc. 6:11).64 Finally, caves can also serve as hiding places for precious objects: 2 Maccabees preserves the tradition about the prophet Jeremiah, hiding the tabernacle, the ark, and the altar of incense in a cave (2 Macc. 2:5).65 None of these examples, however, are a close fit for the cave in the extended Prochorus Acts. More relevant is the story of Elijah’s cave (1 Kgs 19). After his contest with the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel, Elijah travels (strengthened by an angelic cake and water) to Mount Horeb, i.e. Sinai, fleeing for his life from Jezebel. This link with Sinai is made explicit in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on 1 Kgs 19:8: ‘until he came to the mountain upon which the glory of the Lord had been revealed’.66 Furthermore, Elijah’s journey to Horeb, lasting forty days and forty nights (1 Kgs 19:8), echoes the forty years’ wilderness wanderings of Moses and the Israelites. At Horeb, he spends the night in a cave, where the word of the Lord addresses him, prior to his encounter with God on the mountain. It is a motif which is picked up in later pseudepigrapha: in 2 Bar. 21, for example, Baruch fasts for seven days in a cave in the Kidron Valley, prior to the opening of the heavens and hearing a heavenly voice. This same juxtaposition of cave, fasting, and heavenly voice is reflected in the addition to the Prochorus Acts, strengthening the thesis that an Elijah connection is intended. John hears the word of God in a cave after twenty days of fasting, prior to the revelation of ı æØÆ  ººa ŒÆd ªºÆ. Coupled with the earlier passage of the writing of the Gospel (which has linked Patmos with Horeb’s alter ego Sinai), John is thus portrayed as both a Moses and an Elijah figure. The latter link is already implicit in the Apocalypse itself. Not only does it cast John in prophetic mould (e.g. Rev. 1:3; 10:11; 22:18–19), it names one of his prime opponents in the seven churches after Elijah’s archenemy Jezebel (Rev. 2:20).67 Indeed, the patterning of Moses and Elijah is suggested by the description of the two witnesses—parallelling John’s own prophetic ministry—whose ministry echoes the stories of both Old Testament figures (Rev. 11:6; cf. Exod. 7:14–25; 1 Kgs 17:1–7; 18:1, 41–46). Biblical caves may not be the only influence on the Patmos cave tradition, however. Post-biblical tradition, especially in the East, connects the cave with the events of salvation. The late 2nd-century Protevangelium of James locates the birth of Jesus in a cave of Bethlehem (Prot. Jas. 18:1; 19:2), while Constantine’s programme of church-building in the Holy Land identifies others: the cave-tomb of Calvary, and the cave of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives, the latter a ‘cave of revelation’ (die Offenbarungshöhle des 64 65 66 67

Attridge 1989: 351. Caves were also apparently used as hiding places for precious scrolls at Qumran. Harrington and Saldarini 1987: 253. See Boxall 1998: 211–15.

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Gottessohnes) due to its further association with the secret teaching Jesus imparted there to his disciples (e.g. Mark 13).68 Further caves commemorated other biblical characters and events. By the time the cave tradition enters the Prochorus Acts, caves had acquired a further significance for Byzantine Christians: their association with monasticism. Partly because of their connection with darkness and demons, they became popular retreats for monks in the East. Examples include Antony of Egypt (c.251–356), and Antony’s contemporary Paul the hermit (d. c.341) who lived in a cave near the Red Sea. Closer chronologically and culturally to the entry of the cave into the Patmos tradition, are early hermits and monks on Mount Athos, such as the 9th-century Peter the Athonite, and Athanasius the Athonite in the 10th.69 Through Athos, the link between hermits and caves spread to Russia, the earliest known Russian hermit being St Antony of Kiev (d.1073).70 According to E. Benz, the three Christ caves of Christian iconography mirror the threefold character of the caves sought out by Christian ascetics. The tomb-cave (Grabeshöhle) represents the process whereby the ascetic divests himself of worldly concerns; the ‘cave of the resurrection’ (Auferstehungshöhle) is that place where he experiences his victory over the demons, rebirth, and the appearance of heavenly light; the revelation-cave (Offenbarungshöhle) is where the ascetical master imparts his wisdom to his disciples.71 This monastic association of caves cannot be ruled out as an influence on the Patmos cave in the passage under discussion. We find here the teacherdisciple relationship of the Offenbarungshöhle, focused on the revelation of heavenly mysteries. The link with Elijah, a model of asceticism (e.g. 1 Kgs 19:8; 2 Kgs 1:8), provides another connection. As we shall see, in the writings of Christodoulos in the late 11th century, the appropriateness of Patmos as a location for hesychasm has become explicit in the East, as its aptness for contemplation was widely recognized in the medieval West. The Armenian version of the Prochorus Acts (as attested by, e.g. British Library, Arm. 99, Add. 19.728) also contains this cave passage. However, it diverges somewhat from the Greek original, particularly in its more restrained description of what occurred in the cave. Although it concurs with the Greek text that John received a revelation there at the end of a second period of ten days, it does not mention the Apocalypse, emphasizing instead John’s private ecstasy in which he saw ‘extraordinary marvels’ and a vision of angelic hosts, Prochorus apparently being absent in the city during this

68

Benz 1953: 390. See also the mention of the cave on the Mount of Olives in AJ 97. On Constantine’s building projects, see Eusebius, Life of Constantine, bk. III. 69 Sherrard 1960: 6–11. 70 France 1996: 53–4. 71 Benz 1953: 419.

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period.72 This restraint is no doubt a reflection of Armenian doubts about the Apocalypse’s canonicity, which persisted even longer than those of the Byzantine Church.

ORIENTAL ORTHODOX TRADITIONS Armenian controversy over the Apocalypse’s canonical status is reflected in some of the other Oriental Orthodox Churches. While it seems to have been accepted and widely used by the Copts73 and Ethiopians, it was apparently unknown to the Syriac Church until the 5th century, and probably not translated into Armenian until several centuries later. Hence, the commentary tradition is rather sparse. Two Apocalypse commentaries survive from the 12th century: one by the Syrian Dionysius bar Salîbî (a key text for reconstructing the Apocalypse commentary of Hippolytus), and the other by the Armenian Nerses of Lambron, essentially a reworking of Andreas of Caesarea. From the Coptic Church of the 13th century come two more, both written in Arabic: the commentaries of Ibn Kâtib Qaisar and Bûlus al-Bûšî. The latter has no explicit mention of Patmos.74 There is also an Ethiopian commentary tradition, but this was largely preserved orally rather than in written form.75 Other relevant texts tend to be hagiographical accounts. What follows does not claim to be exhaustive, but is dependent upon those works readily available in English translation.

Hagiographical texts Several of the texts which have survived are translations of the Prochorus Acts, or closely related writings, demonstrating their popularity beyond the Greekspeaking world. Some of these contain noteworthy additions or variations. The first is from an Arabic manuscript of the 14th century, the Travels of St John the Son of Zebedee, preserved in the Coptic Convent of Deyr-es-Suriani in Egypt. This is an Arabic translation of Coptic legends of the Apostles, probably translated into Coptic from Greek originals in the 5th or 6th century. There is a clear family resemblance to the Prochorus Acts, although Junod and 72 ‘Et Jean passa là dix autres jours encore. Il eut alors une grande extase et vit des merveilles extraordinaires et les armées des anges descendant ‹des cieux et› lui racontant des paroles ineffables. Puis, lorsque je ‹re›vins à lui, nous retournâmes dans la cité’: Leloir 1986: 405. 73 On the Bohairic Coptic version, see Hoskier 1911. 74 Talia 1987. 75 Cowley 1983.

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Kaestli claim that it depends directly on the Syriac History of John.76 The Arabic Travels anticipate the exile to Patmos by a vision of Christ which takes place at Mîrawât (probably the Marmareon of the Prochorus Acts): And the Lord said unto him: ‘Arise, and cross to the city of Ephesus. And after three days thou shalt journey to an island which hath need of thee, and many trials shall happen unto thee and thou shalt stay in it a long time.’ Then we arose quickly and we returned to Ephesus; and when we entered it, the temples which were in it fell down, and nothing remained in them. And all these things John did in Ephesus before he was driven away. And the reason for what had befallen him through the Jews and the heathen, whom Satan had stirred up against him, and all the wonders which were shewn by him, and the driving away, and the persecution which befell him in the island of Patmos, [all] this is written in very many books which we call . . . 77

In its present form, this text lacks a detailed description of John’s sojourn on Patmos, although its author claims to know ‘very many books’ which describe it. What we do find is the same exploitation of the ambiguity of Rev. 1:9. From an earthly, political perspective, John is sent to Patmos as a result of hostility in Ephesus. However, within the larger divine plan, he goes as emissary to ‘an island which hath need of thee’, and where he will face persecution as a consequence. The Ethiopic GADLA HAWÂRYÂT (or Contendings of the Apostles), probably a translation of this Arabic version and preserved in manuscripts from the 14th or 15th century onwards, contains substantially the same passage.78 Instead of the ‘very many books’, however, it claims that the exploits of John in Ephesus, and ‘all the wonderful things which were made manifest by him, and the beatings which fell upon him in the Island of PATMOS, are written in an exceedingly large book, the name of which is ‘KÂMÂDAGÎ’.’79 Also noteworthy is the Arabic version of The Death of Saint John. In its introduction, it makes the unusual claim that this event occurred not in Ephesus but on Patmos itself: The Death of Saint John, the Son of Zebedee, the Evangelist, the disciple of our Lord Jesus the Christ, who spake about the Divinity: and his removal from this world. And this was in the island of Patmos on the fourth day of Tûba.80

Tûba (or Tobi) is the fifth month of the Coptic calendar (9th January–7th February), and 4th Tûba the Coptic Orthodox feast of the ‘Departure of

76

Junod and Kaestli 1983: II, 716–17; Smith Lewis 1904: xxii. Smith Lewis 1904: 52–3. 78 Budge 1935: ix-xi. Budge’s translation is largely based on a 15th-century manuscript from the British Museum. 79 Budge 1935: 211. Ms B reads ‘Kalâmdan. 80 Smith Lewis 1904: 54. 77

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St John the Evangelist and Theologian’. While the phrase ‘his removal from this world’ on its own might refer to John’s being caught up ‘in spirit’ to heaven (Rev. 4:1), the passage as a whole is explicit in referring to his death. Despite this, the main text follows all other Acts and Lives in locating John’s death in the vicinity of Ephesus, where the Copts also locate the event. In the Ethiopic translation of this introduction, John’s departure from Patmos is dated to the fourth day of the month Ter (30th December). Again, the main body follows other texts in locating his death in Ephesus, only mentioning Patmos as the place where he saw the Apocalypse.81 This claim that John died on Patmos is rare in the history of reception. Interestingly, although probably quite independently, similar sentiments are found in the popular 20th-century American hymn ‘They cast their nets in Galilee’, by William Alexander Percy (1924): Young John who trimmed the flapping sail, homeless in Patmos died. Peter who hauled the teeming net, head-down was crucified.82

Two biographical texts from the Syriac tradition have interesting references to Patmos. The first (Mingana Syriac 540) is a manuscript containing the Peshitta New Testament, and a treatise on the twelve apostles and seventy disciples. Its editor, Alphonse Mingana, believed it to be a faithful copy, from 1749, of an original to be dated c.750 ce.83 The treatise states this: John the Evangelist was also from Bethsaida. He was of the tribe of Zebulun. He preached in Asia first, and afterwards was banished by Tiberius Caesar to the isle of Patmos. Then he went to Ephesus and built up the church in it.84

This is the earliest attested dating of John’s banishment (Tiberius died in 37 ce). A further interesting note is the attribution of the Apocalypse to another John, the apostle’s disciple, but directly based on the evangelist’s own Patmos experience: ‘for he said that he heard all that he wrote from the mouth of the Evangelist’.85 This is an unusual attempt to reconcile the traditional Johannine authorship of Revelation with the stylistic differences (already detected by Dionysius of Alexandria) between Gospel and Apocalypse. A much later Syriac text contains an otherwise unattested biographical claim that one of John’s companions during his stay on Patmos was the Virgin Mary. This is found in an appendix to book five of the Chronicle of Michael

81 82 83 84 85

Budge 1935: 212; the fourth day of Ter is 30th December. Episcopal Church 1985: hymn 661. Mingana 1930. Translation from Bruce 1978: 356. Bruce: 1978: 357.

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the Syrian, Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch (1166–1199), attributed to Dionysius bar Salîbî: John preached at Antioch with Simon;86 afterwards he went from there to Ephesus, and Our Lord’s Mother accompanied him. Immediately they were exiled [ils furent relégués] to the island of Patmos. On his return from exile, he preached at Ephesus, and built a church there; Ignatius and Polycarp served him; he buried the blessed Mary. He lived for 73 years and died after all the (other) apostles; he was buried at Ephesus.87

Patriarch Michael himself attests to the standard tradition that John was relegated to Patmos under Domitian, although he knows a rival tradition that claims he was there until Nero’s reign.88 He also gives the length of the Patmos exile as six years.89 A further unusual codicil to the Syriac tradition is Michael’s claim that Nestorius was exiled to Patmos by the Synod of Ephesus (presumably the Council of 451) after being anathematized.90 This is an unexpected casting of Nestorius in the role of the exile John, given the generally negative view of him on the part of the Syriac Orthodox Church. We have already discussed the Armenian translation of the Prochorus Acts, based on the expanded form (though downplaying the actual writing of the Apocalypse). Another Armenian hagiographical text is the History of James and John, which is explicit in its claim that both Apocalypse and Gospel were composed on Patmos: ‘Later, John was exiled by the Emperor Domitian to the island of Patmos, where he wrote the heavenly vision and the holy Gospel [où il écrivit la divine vision et le saint évangile]’.91 The order is interesting, suggesting that the writing of the Apocalypse preceded that of the Fourth Gospel. The alternative reading of ms. 569 reverses this order, bringing it in line with the order of the expanded Prochorus Acts.

Commentaries Surviving commentaries from the Oriental Orthodox Churches are late, the first examples being written in the 12th century. The Syriac commentary by Dionysius bar Salîbî, Syrian Metropolitan of Amida (d.1171),92 has already been mentioned as a potential source for Hippolytus (see the section on Hippolytus in Chapter 2). The passage in question (bar Salîbî’s commentary 86 87 88 89 90 91 92

Simon Peter, traditionally first bishop of Antioch. My translation from the French in Chabot 1899: I, 148. Chabot 1899: I, 163 (Book VI, chapter II); 173 (Book VI, chapter IV). Chabot 1899: I, 164 (Book VI, chapter II). Chabot 1899: II, 436 (Book XI, chapter IX). Histoire de Jacques et Jean 4: my translation from the French in Leloir 1986: 412–13. Dionysius Bar Salîbî, ed. Sedlacek 1910.

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on Rev. 10:11) uncontroversially attributes John’s exile to Domitian’s action, and maintains that the writing of the Apocalypse (on Patmos) precedes that of the Gospel (in Ephesus). His other mention of Patmos, in his commentary on Rev. 1:9, also relates to John’s biography. Patmos is the place where John was exiled ‘on account of the faith’, a testimony he claims was found in ‘all books’. As further evidence for John’s presence on Patmos, bar Salîbî refers to the letter to John of PseudoDionysius.93 The Armenian scholar and archbishop Nerses of Lambron (1153–1198) played a crucial role in integrating the Apocalypse into mainstream Armenian life. As well as making a fresh Armenian translation of Revelation, he also adapted Andreas of Caesarea to produce the first Armenian Apocalypse commentary in 1179.94 His comments on Rev. 1:9 come in the opening section of his first Homily (covering Rev. 1:1–9): ‘Your brother,’ he says, ‘and equal in troubles in Christ,’ so that he might be worthy of belief that ‘I am with you.’ And because of being sharer with you in Christ by affliction, I am on Patmos for the sake of love. And as a counsellor to the brothers I relate to you what here appeared to me.95

Although the substance is from Andreas, Nerses differs from his predecessor in two details. First, he states that John was on Patmos ‘for the sake of love’. This suggests a profoundly Johannine motif, patterned on the example of the Lord himself (e.g. John 13:34; 1 John 4:7), and hints at an alternative interpretation of ‘on account of the word of God etc.’ (Rev. 1:9). Second, where Andreas has John announce the mysteries seen by him on Patmos (Iƪª ººø "E a øæÆ Æ  Ø K ÆP B fi ı æØÆ), Nerses states that he does so as ‘counsellor to the brothers.’ Roger Cowley’s research has explored the Apocalypse commentary tradition of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, a difficult task given the oral transmission of Ethiopian biblical commentaries.96 Of the two he discusses which illuminate the Patmos tradition, the first is written in Geez, found in a manuscript dated probably to the late 18th century, of an original no earlier than the end of the 13th (in Cowley’s view possibly the work of a late 16th-century author/translator).97 Its commentary on Rev. 1:9 describes John’s island of revelation—which it calls Fə ̣tmo (probably related to Phatmos, a variant reading found in some Latin manuscripts)—as ‘one of the islands of Sälagya of Antioch’. Sälagya is 93 Bar Salîbî, ed. Sedlacek 1910: 3. This letter of Pseudo-Dionysius has been discussed in Chapter 2. 94 English translation in Nerses of Lambron 2007. 95 Nerses of Lambron 2007: 50. 96 Cowley 1983. 97 Cowley 1983: 73–4.

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almost certainly Seleucia, the port town of Antioch where, according to the Prochorus Acts, Prochorus and his fellow travellers are washed up after a storm at sea. This shifts the position of Patmos significantly eastwards from the Aegean to the eastern Mediterranean, an unusual reading within those interpretations which locate Patmos geographically.98 A second distinctive feature is the dating of John’s vision on Fə ṭ mo: ‘This happened in the ninth year after the ascension of our Saviour—to whom be praise—in the second year of the reign of Claudius Caesar, son of Tiberius.’99 This would date the vision of the Apocalypse, if not its actual writing, to approximately 42 ce. The Claudian dating may derive from Epiphanius, the earliest to make such a claim. The remaining comments on Rev. 1:9 seem to be a reworking of the shipwreck story from the Prochorus Acts. In the original Greek version, Prochorus makes his way from Seleucia to Asia, where he is finally reunited with John at Marmareon near Ephesus. It is only at a later stage that he and Prochorus are sent to Patmos. In this Geez commentary, John is immediately brought to Fə ṭ mo, the island of Revelation: When he [John] left that country in order to go to the country of Antioch, he embarked on a boat, a wind arose against him, the boat was broken, and he sank in the sea. By the will of God the sea brought him up and put him on this island which we mentioned previously. He lived on it for forty days and forty nights, and saw there all this vision, until it was named ‘Abu Qälämsis, which in the language of the Greeks means ‘seer of mysteries during his life-time’.100

Patmos/Fə ṭ mo is here given a new name, as a consequence of the vision received by the seer. The forty days and forty nights evoke the stories of Moses (Deut. 9:18) and Elijah (1 Kgs 19:8). An additional comment presents the more traditional view, attributed here to ‘some’, that the exile was to ‘Bä ̣tmus’ (a different island from Fə ṭ mo of Sälagya, and presumably the Aegean ‘Patmos’) as a consequence of Domitianic persecution. It maintains the Eastern tradition that John had a companion and scribe, whom it calls Koqir or Abrokorus (i.e. Prochorus): Some say he saw this on the island of Bä ̣tmus, when Domitian Caesar exiled him in the ninth year of his reign; and that Koqir, namely Abrokorus, wrote this vision at John’s dictation, as is written in Mahbub of the son of the well-known Constantine.101

A second text discussed by Cowley is the Amharic Andəmta (an oral corpus of Amharic commentaries on scripture and other sacred texts) on the 98

Although possibly echoed in Richard of St Victor’s in mari Syrico: see chapter 4. Cowley 1983: 81. 100 Cowley 1983: 81–2. The storm story suggests demonic activity (cf. e.g. Mark 4:35–41), defeated by the ‘will of God’ which caused the sea to bring him up onto Patmos. 101 Cowley 1983: 82. 99

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Apocalypse. Like the Geez commentary, the Apocalypse Andəmta locates Patmos geographically close to Syrian Antioch, recalling the story of the storm at sea found in the Prochorus Acts: When he was going to and fro, to Syria having taught in Antioch, and to Antioch have taught in Syria, he was shipwrecked in the sea of Seleucia. He was on one bit of wreckage and his disciple Prochorus on another, and they entered the island called Patmos.102

While there, ‘the matters of Titus, the false Messiah, and the parousia were revealed to him, and he wrote’. The vision is dated to ‘the first, second, or ninth year’ after the ascension of the Lord. If the first or second, then the reign of Tiberius is intended. If the ninth year, then (given the statement in the Geez commentary) the Patmos vision occurred in the reign of Claudius. One version (A) offers a slightly fuller account, including a statement of the length of the storm (the length of Noah’s flood: Gen. 7:17): When he was going to and fro, to Syria having taught in Antioch, and to Antioch having taught in Syria, powerful waves rose up against the ship in the sea of Seleucia and it was driven around for forty days. Because of the force of the waves, the very ocean depths appeared to him opened up. With great difficulty they reached—or ‘they entered’—the island called Patmos.

An additional phrase preceding this passage in ms. R reiterates the JohnMoses typology, hinting at a parallel, and contrast, between the Mosaic Law and the ‘revelation of Jesus Christ’: ‘(John) petitioned saying, “They know what was done previously, Moses having written it for them in the Torah; but by what shall they know what will be done henceforth?” This was revealed to him, and he wrote.’103 The commentary proper on Rev. 1:9 echoes the Geez commentary in its discussion of Fə ̣tmo, including some attempt at a figurative interpretation of its name, though with its own distinctive features. John finds himself on the island as a result of his teaching ministry: ‘by reason of teaching his preexistence, his abiding presence, his testimony’. Fə ̣tmo means both ‘place of forgiveness’ and ‘place of vision’. The visionary aspect is prioritized, through the extraordinary claim that the island was already known to John’s Old Testament antecedents: ‘Formerly Moses and Aaron saw visions there; afterwards, Daniel and Jeremiah and their companions saw visions there.’104 This unparalleled statement may not be a literal claim about the geographical location of John’s visionary and prophetic predecessors. Rather, it is an assertion that what all these biblical characters have in common is a ‘place of vision’, a Fə ̣tmo or Patmos. 102 104

Cowley 1983: 177. Cowley 1983: 190.

103

Cowley 1983: 177, n. 1.

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PATMOS AS MONASTIC IDEAL: WRITINGS OF ST CHRISTODOULOS The year 1088 marks a crucial stage in the reception of Patmos in Greek Christianity. In that year St Christodoulos persuaded the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Comnenos (1081–1118) to allow him to settle on Patmos and begin building the Monastery of St John the Theologian. The imperial chrysobull of April 1088 granting the island to Christodoulos is preserved in the monastery treasury. Christodoulos had previously lived the monastic life at Mount Olympus in Bithynia, in Palestine, Paul the Younger’s monastery at Latros, and the island of Kos before arriving on the then deserted island of Patmos. There he founded a monastery on the site of what is believed to be the ruined temple of Artemis, where a chapel dedicated to John stood.105 Evidence for the previous Christian occupation is provided by a 4th-century inscription, referring to the consecration of the altar of ‘the esteemed apostle and Theologian John’ by Bishop Epithymitos.106 Within four years of Christodoulos’s arrival, due to a combination of internal dissension among his monks and attacks on Patmos from the Turks, he abandoned the island for Euboea, where he died on 16 March 1093. His monastic foundation, however, was soon restored and continues on Patmos to the present day. Among Christodoulos’s surviving writings, his Monastic Rule (Hypotyposis) of May 1091 provides first-hand evidence for his choice of Patmos for his monastic foundation. In the autobiographical section of the Hypotyposis, Christodoulos describes the decision to move from Kos to the more secluded security of Patmos, a decision shared by his fellow monks, who had suggested the island for its desolate and uninhabited state, and for the inaccessibility of its harbour to regular shipping. Christodoulos continues: In short, desire for this island completely took possession of me, a desire made more acute because here had dwelt the Apostle that Christ loved, [St. John] the virgin Evangelist. Here he had his famous vision, his all-blessed ecstasy and change, here his exalted and heavenly initiation into theology [l  B Ł º ªÆ "łÅºc ŒÆd PæØ  ı ƪøªÆ]. Here the Gospel was dictated in the thunder of God’s voice. Taking all this into consideration, when I compare Patmos to Sinai, I set the former as far above the latter, and account it first, as I set grace above the shadow, truth above appearances, the spirit above the letter and the Gospel above the Law of the Tablets.107

105

Angold 1995: 360.  IØ æøØ F ±ª ı ŁıØÆ Åæ ı F K ı I  º ı Œ(Æd) ¨()øºª ı
ø ı Kd F ›Øø ( ı) KØŒ( ı) H
¯ØŁıÅ F: Orlandou 1970: 311. 107 Christodoulos, Rule A9: English translation from Karlin-Hayter 2000: 582; Greek text in Miklosich and Müller 1890: 64. 106

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Two features of Patmos emerge in this short passage, which will be reiterated elsewhere in Christodoulos. The first stresses its isolation and inaccessibility, making it an appropriate location for the monastic life which Christodoulos and his monks wished to sustain. Hesychasm, the Orthodox tradition of mental ascesis, was central to Christodoulos’s monastic vision. Indeed, in his chrysobull, Alexios I Comnenos refers to him as both a monk and a hesychast ( fiH PºÆ   fiø  ÆåfiH æØ  ºfiø ŒÆd ıåÆ B fi ). Christodoulos’s biographer John of Rhodes likewise lists as one of his greatest characteristics ‘love of stillness’, e çغ ıå .108 In searching out the island of John the ‘virgin Evangelist’ to pursue this monastic project, Christodoulos presents the latter, at least implicitly, as a model for the monastic life.109 The appropriateness of Patmos for monastic silence is further developed in another passage of the Hypotyposis, which accentuates the remote character of the island, its distance from centres of human population, and the inhospitality of its harbour: The loneliness of the island [ fiH KæÅØŒfiH B   ı] made me leap for joy. I delighted in its tranquillity [ıåfiø], rejoiced that it was untrodden. Its remoteness and dreariness were to me a treasure of cheerfulness.110

Christodoulos goes on to commend this dimension of the island for those brothers seeking the solitary life: For since much of the island is deserted [ c KæÅÆ], and it can show sites completely isolated and undisturbed, I think that this exalted way of life—hard to achieve for those still troubled by passions, not to say wholly unattainable—will yet challenge some.111

Indeed, he comes close to presenting St John, on whose island they find themselves, as a figure for the hermit-monk whose life is one of severity: ‘No less can be required of such as determine to pursue with submission the solitary vocation in the Lord on this island of ours, or rather of the beloved of Christ, [St. John] the Theologian.’112 Christodoulos’s reference to the desolate and tranquil character of Patmos, though inappropriate as a description of the island of Patmos in John’s day, reflects its changed circumstances by the 11th century. Like other Aegean islands, due largely to piracy and naval battles between the Byzantines and Arabs, Patmos seems to have been largely deserted from about the 7th century.

108

Ware 1989: 29. See also Morris 1995: 48. 110 Rule A11: Karlin-Hayter 2000: 583; Miklosich and Müller 1890: 66. See also Ware 1989: 30. 111 Rule A23: Karlin-Hayter 2000: 590; Miklosich and Müller 1890: 76. 112 Rule A24: Karlin-Hayter 2000: 592; Miklosich and Müller 1890: 77. 109

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This is borne out by the report of the imperial notary and judge of the Cyclades, Nicolaus Tzanzes, who inspected Patmos in August 1088, at the command of the emperor Alexios I. Nicolaus describes Patmos as being completely deserted (æÅ  ‹ºÅ), ‘covered with thorns and other undergrowth, and pathless’, and devoid of water (¼ıæ ).113 He also refers to the ruins ‘of a once magnificent church which stood on the top of the highest mountain’, and a poor little chapel dedicated to St John the Theologian:   PŒ æØ  Øåæe K
›(Æ) (Ø) F Ø( ı) KŒ Ø( )( ) ¨ º(ª ı).114 A second dimension of Christodoulos’s description of Patmos is his adoption of the Sinai-Patmos typological interpretation implicit in the Prochorus Acts. Through John’s vision, Patmos has become holy ground, surpassing even the greatest biblical paradigm for divine revelation, as ‘grace above the shadow, truth above appearances’. Karlin-Hayter’s translation perhaps best conveys Christodoulos’s sense at this point, as it describes the new Sinai where John ‘had his famous vision, his all-blessed ecstasy and change, here his exalted and heavenly initiation into theology’ ( B Ł º ªÆ "łÅºc ŒÆd PæØ  ı ƪøªÆ).115 There are sufficient echoes of the expanded form of the Prochorus Acts to make Christodoulos’s knowledge of this text probable. The Mosaic typology, the description of the divine thunder, and the attention both to John’s vision received in ecstasy and the writing of the Gospel, all point in this direction. Moreover, Christodoulos also knows of the tradition of John’s cave. Indeed, one of his actions during his brief period on Patmos was the identification of a specific cave below the site of his monastery as the Cave of the Apocalypse, around which he ordered the construction of a church (dedicated to St Anne, in honour of the emperor’s mother Anna). This is just one example of the interweaving of ‘physical artefacts’ with oral and written traditions from the 11th century onwards, with the return of a Christian presence to the island. One further passage from the Hypotyposis should be mentioned. Referring to his desire to spend the rest of his earthly life on the island (a wish denied him),116 Christodoulos writes that ‘God had decided that on Patmos I should find my fate and my grave’ (KŒØ b ¼æÆ fiH Œæ Ø c —    a    Ø  æe Æç ).117 The sentiment of the statement exploits the similarity between    and the noun   , ‘fate’, ‘doom’, or ‘death’: to be on Patmos is Christodoulos’s   .

113

Nystazopoulou-Pelekediou 1980: 39; for an English translation, see Ware 1989: 30. Nystazopoulou-Pelekediou 1980: 39; see Diehl 1892: 488; Stone 1981: 12. 115 Ševčenko suggests also an allusion to Moses’ vision at the burning bush: Ševčenko 1989: 174. 116 Although his mortal remains were subsequently brought back to Patmos for burial in the monastery. 117 Christodoulos, Rule A7: Miklosich and Müller 1890: 63; Karlin-Hayter 2000: 581. 114

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Christodoulos’s conception of Patmos as an ideal island for monastics, and (following the Prochorus Acts) as a sacred place where a Sinaitic theophany occurred, finds an echo in the writings of some of his spiritual sons. The following passage by Athanasius, a monk of Patmos who became Patriarch of Antioch in 1156, describes an island transformed from the ‘deserted’ Patmos found by Christodoulos into an earthly paradise whose fruitfulness echoes descriptions of the messianic age (e.g. 2 Bar. 29:5): [Can you not] see the monastery girdled around by strong walls; with its interior dignified by much artistic effort? There is the inexplicable beauty of the church, gleaming in the brilliance of the marble cladding, illuminated by the gold-glinting effervescence of the holy icons. See the choir of dignified fathers and the holy tomb, which, like some bubbling spring, pours forth streams of miracles. But step a little way outside. You will see the beauty of the meadows, both broad and shady, brimming with fine fruit trees. Look at the abundant foliage of the trees, heavy with blossom, bearing beautiful and luxuriant fruit; all the more astounding because they grow out of the dry rock. In due season you will see the meadows covered in smiling crops, waving gently in the light sea breezes; inviting the harvester’s sickle, in tune with the rhythms of the land which abounds in flocks about to bring forth their young. Then there are the vineyards weighed down with clusters of grapes. Who can enumerate the variety and quality of vegetables, not to mention the innumerable flocks of sheep and goats which provide a copious source of milk?118

Athanasius’s description was written to celebrate the translation of the relics of Christodoulos to Patmos (his is the ‘holy tomb’ which ‘pours forth streams of miracles’), hence its emphasis on ‘the mystique of the monastery’,119 and the idealization of the island more generally.

CO NCLUSION The texts discussed in this chapter testify to the energy and originality of the reception of Rev. 1:9 within the various churches of the East from the 5th century onwards. Whilst earlier patristic interest in John’s biography continues, one finds significant divergence in the details. Those who connect John’s exile with imperial action regularly diverge from the Domitianic dating: alternatives are the reigns of Tiberius, Claudius, and Trajan (or Hadrian). Unusual additions to the tradition include the Arabic and Ethiopic suggestion that John might have died on Patmos, while at least one Syriac text has the Virgin Mary accompany him there. Although almost all the sources with 118 119

Greek text in Vraouse 1980: 78*; English translation from Angold 1995: 367. Angold 1995: 368.

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a geographical interest locate John’s island in the Aegean, a rival Geez tradition places Patmos, or Fə ṭ mo, further east off the Syrian coast. The text also spawns very different topographies. The large and vibrant island of the Prochorus Acts stands in sharp contrast to Oecumenius’s ‘small and desolate island,’ as does the rich, Eden-like description in Athanasius of Antioch. Ongoing reticence about the Apocalypse’s place in the canon is reflected in the original Prochorus Acts, as well as in the expanded Armenian version, which substitutes John’s visionary experience for the book he wrote. Some interpreters exploit the ambiguity of the phrase Øa e ºª  F Ł F, etc. to posit a more theological explanation alongside the exile theory. In the Prochorus Acts and the Arabic Travels of St John, John finds himself on Patmos as part of the divine plan, while Nerses of Lambron places him there ‘for the sake of love.’ This chapter has also illustrated the capacity of the text to generate nonliteral readings, independently of, though paralleling, those found in the Latin West. The Sinai-Patmos typology makes some extraordinary claims for the authority of the Fourth Gospel (described by Simeon Metaphrastes as ‘the new law’), while the expanded form of the Prochorus Acts sets up a relationship between John’s Apocalypse and the revelation received by Elijah on Mount Horeb. Christodoulos builds on this reading to present John as a 1st-century equivalent of a Byzantine hesychast, thus offering an actualization of Revelation whereby his 11th-century monastic foundation relives John’s Patmos experience in changed circumstances. He exploits the appropriateness of a secluded island for monastic silence, and John’s role as ‘theologian’ (Ł ºª ), for whom Patmos was the place of initiation into theology. Above all, this rich Eastern reception history highlights the role of the imagination in interpretation. The narrative world created by the Prochorus Acts, and the emergence of Prochorus as a key character in John’s story, is perhaps the most elaborate example of a tendency to exploit gaps within the biblical text. When John heard a voice on Patmos ‘on the Lord’s Day’ (Rev. 1:10), what was he doing? Was he alone, or in the company of others? Was he a solitary exile on a desolate prison-island, or a ıªŒ Øø with a community of Christians living a flourishing ecclesial and liturgical life? The text provides no clear guidance here. Western exegetes, inhabiting a particular reception history, presume the former. The Prochorus Acts and related traditions beyond the Byzantine world imagine an alternative scenario which is no less justifiable exegetically.

6 Patmos in Western Interpreters from 1517 I N T R O D U C TI O N This chapter, the longest in the book due to the volume of relevant extant material, will consider interpretations of Patmos in the modern period up to the present. It takes as its terminus a quo 1517, often cited as marking the beginning of the Reformation as the year in which Luther posted his theses in Wittenburg.1 It concludes where most contemporary scholars begin, with a survey of the treatment of Patmos in historical-critical commentaries published since 1900 (which should be read in conjunction with Appendix 1).2 This latter survey is meant to be illustrative rather than exhaustive, to highlight the narrow set of questions historical critics pose to Rev. 1:9, and the unimaginative character of their responses, by comparison with many of their predecessors. It is not meant to underestimate the significance of earlier historical-critical commentaries, such as those of Eichhorn, Weiss, or Bousset (discussed elsewhere in this chapter).3 Given the broad chronological timespan, and the diversity of readings, the material in this chapter is organized primarily thematically, and according to different patterns of interpretation,4 although chronological order has been maintained in the discussion of similar readings. Examples have been included 1 MacCulloch 2003: 123. All attempts at historical periodization, however, are necessarily arbitrary. One can find strong elements of continuity with medieval exegesis, particularly (although not exclusively) in Catholic commentators, well into the ‘modern period’: e.g. Bartholomaeus Holzhauser (d.1658), and the 18th-century Carmelite Joannis da Sylveira: Holzhauser 1850; Sylveira 1754. 2 A random search of bibliographies in some recent commentaries on Revelation reveals almost total dependence on post-1900 commentaries: e.g. Sweet 1979; Witherington 2003; Blount 2009. 3 Eichhorn 1791; Weiss 1891; Bousset 1896. 4 This will, it is hoped, offer a more precise account of the reception history than dividing the material into Catholic and Protestant interpretations. Although the Catholic reaction to the Reformers spawned some new approaches, notably the futurism of Francisco Ribeira (1537– 1591) and the preterist interpretation of Luís de Alcázar (1554–1613), both reactions to the antipapal historical-prophetic readings of the Reformers, the differences are less pronounced in the treatment of Patmos.

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of each type of interpretation discovered, representing a range of genres (commentaries, sermons, and poems) and Christian traditions, and incorporating popular texts as well as the works of recognized scholars and authority figures (this explains the inclusion of little-known interpreters such as Hezekiah Holland of Sutton Valence).5 The early part of the period under discussion (up to c.1700) is a particularly interesting one for Apocalypse interpretation.6 Although the magisterial Reformers (Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin) avoided commenting upon the Book of Revelation, a more general apocalyptic fervour was widespread in this period on both sides of the divide, and not just on the radical fringes.7 Barnes relates this to the ‘swelling of apprehension and guilt’ of the late Middle Ages, combined with a heightened sense of future possibility, the result of Renaissance developments, voyages of discovery, and more optimistic strands in medieval apocalypticism.8 He notes how Joachite influence even affected many Jesuits, encouraging them to see the Society of Jesus as playing a crucial role in eschatological events.9 Commentators throughout the whole modern period exhibit renewed focus on the biography of John. Many consider the geography of the island, and explore the significance of its size and character. Unsurprisingly, given contemporary events, especially in the early part of this period, attention is paid to John’s exile as an example of persecution, and John’s status as role-model for later generations who suffer hostility for their faith. In this regard, there are some interesting examples of ‘actualization’ to be explored. There is the occasional attempt to consider Patmos as a symbolic name, or to investigate its possible etymological origins. Finally, in the second half of this period, we find the imaginative potential of John’s island being exploited with particular gusto by poets, as well as proposals amongst critical commentators that the Patmos location is itself the result of imaginative creation on the part of Revelation’s human author.

BIOGRAPHICAL INTEREST Interest in Patmos within the wider biography of John is widespread during the modern period, sometimes explored in great detail, and attested by both 5

Sensitivity to genre is reflected in the decision to discuss poetry in a separate section. See, for example, Bauckham 1978; Firth 1979; McGinn 1996: 11–35; Backus 2000. The year 1700 is adopted by Diarmaid MacCulloch as the end of the ‘early modern period’ in his magisterial work on the Reformation: MacCulloch 2003: xxiii. 7 See Bauckham 1978: 11–14. 8 Barnes 2000: 143–84. 9 Barnes 2000: 159. 6

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Protestant and Catholic authors. While this was never absent during the Middle Ages, two factors might clarify its particular prominence post-1517. First, the humanist return ad fontes, and its general focus on the grammatical and historical sense (influencing both the early Reformers and Catholic exegetes), offers a partial explanation of the attention to classical references to Patmos and early patristic testimony.10 Second, a number of Reformation commentators turn to a historical-prophetic or church-historical pattern of exegesis in order to illuminate the Apocalypse, and their own location within the visions it describes. Hence, in an exegetical move which parallels the ‘actualizations’ of early patristic authors such as Tertullian, their consideration of Rev. 1:9 focuses on how Domitianic persecution of 1st-century Christians presages the Roman onslaught on faithful Christians of the 16th century onwards.

Defence of Apostolic Authorship Given Erasmus’s revival of doubts regarding the apostolic authorship of the Apocalypse, interest in the biographical significance of Patmos is often adduced in its defence, a feature of Catholic and Protestant commentators alike.11 They exploit the fact that ancient authors who describe John’s exile to Patmos know of no other candidate than John the apostle.12 This is the major concern of the Franciscan Frans Titelmans, in his 1530 treatise on the authority of the book (Libri duo de authoritate libri Apocalypsis), citing a long list of patristic and medieval authorities, including the letter of PseudoDionysius the Areopagite.13 An illustration from the Protestant side is Sebastian Meyer, a former Franciscan and one of the leaders of the Reform in Bern who published his Apocalypse commentary c.1536–1545.14 Meyer appeals to the tradition of John’s deportation to Patmos in his preface, in order to establish that this John is to be identified with John the apostle.15 As a Protestant commentary, Meyer’s is interesting for holding together heightened interest in the historical context of John’s vision with Primasius’s more imaginative reading of Patmos as transcending terrestrial geography

10 Gibbs 2009: 384–5; Rummel 2009: 280–1, 294. For example, the Catholic Peter Bulengerus appeals to Jerome, Eusebius, and Orosius for the details and dating of Domitian’s persecution of Christians: Bulengerus 1589: 22a–3a. 11 On Protestant responses, see Backus 2000: 3–36. 12 Dionysius of Alexandria, who does distinguish between John the seer and John the Evangelist, makes no explicit mention of Patmos. 13 Titelmans 1530; see Backus 2000: 13–18. See also Guilielmus Estius in Vulgate 1575: 12. 14 Backus 1997: 19; Bauckham 1978: 269. 15 Meyer 1540: preface.

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(a combination one might more readily expect to find in a Catholic exegete):16 Ecclesiastical Histories agree that John the Evangelist was banished to this island [in eam insulam deportatum] for preaching Christ as God, by the emperor Domitian, who was the first of the Roman emperors who wanted to be considered as a god, and statues of gold and silver to be decreed for himself. While in his exile, meanwhile, he who was forbidden to go beyond a certain spot on earth was granted consolation by mental contemplation of the whole world; indeed he was permitted to wander through the regions of heaven [in cuius exilij consolationem illi datum est mentis contuitu orbis totius interim, imò coelorum climata peruagari, cui certa terrarũ spatia negabatur excedere].17

Franciscus Junius also appeals to the biographical tradition in defence of the authority of the Apocalypse in his 1591 commentary. His interpretation of Revelation gained wide circulation given that his notes were subsequently reproduced in the 1602 edition of the Geneva Bible. Junius treats John’s narration at Rev. 1:9ff. as ‘opening the way to the declaring of the authoritie and calling of S. Iohn the Euangelist in this singular Reuelation; and to procure faith and credit vnto this prophesie’. It therefore establishes the identity of the seer, the place, manner, and time of the vision, and the means by which it occurred; ‘namely, by the Spirit and the word’.18 J. Foord’s 1597 commentary, similarly following the pattern established by the Glossa ordinaria of discussing persona, locus, and tempus, also sets out to establish the apostolic identity of the author: Which John, then, lived in exile on Patmos [exulabat in Patmo], except this apostle of ours? Who has everywhere, always, and by the best in the holy Catholic Church been believed to be the writer of this Apocalypse except John the beloved apostle of Jesus Christ?19

Variation in Dating Although the Domitianic exile tradition remains dominant in commentaries of this period, alternative datings for the Patmos sojourn are attested. Several know Epiphanius’s dating to the reign of Claudius. Matthias Hoe, in his 1610 Commentariorum in Beati Apostoli et Evangelistae Johannis Apocalypsin, corrects this dating in favour of the traditional Domitianic one: ‘not however by Claudius, as Epiphanius wrongly claims’ (non quidem a Claudio, uti Epiphanius errat).20 The French Catholic bishop and preacher Jacques Bénigne Bossuet 16 17 18 19 20

Unlike his contemporary Lambert, Meyer strongly rejects the Joachite pattern of exegesis. Latin text in Meyer 1540: 4r, on Rev. 1:9. Junius 1592, on Rev. 1:9. Latin text in Foord 1597: 7. Latin text in Hoe 1610: I, 104.

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(1627–1704) also knows Epiphanius’s alternative, and appeals to patristic testimony to locate John’s exile to Patmos within the reign of Domitian, and after the boiling oil episode in Rome.21 William Whiston, Professor of Mathematics in the University of Cambridge, also defends the traditional dating of John’s banishment to 96 ce, which, he notes, ‘excepting Epiphanius, is the unanimous Voice of Antiquity; and as the general Suffrage of Chronologers, both Papists and Protestants’.22 Isaac Williams (1802–1865), prominent member of the Oxford Movement, opts for the later dating on internal evidence: ‘Without entering into all the discussions on this point, which leave the matter uncertain, we may observe that there is something in the impressive and mournful solemnity of this book which seems to characterize it as the last of St. John’s writings.’23 Other commentators attempt to reconcile the two datings. Hugo Grotius (d.1645), an early Protestant advocate of a preterist reading of Revelation, maintains that Domitian reinstated John’s punishment first imposed by Claudius, which had been rescinded by Vespasian.24 A similar explanation is offered in 1670 by A. B. Peganius, alias C. Knorr von Rosenroth. Although both Eusebius and Jerome are clear in attributing John’s banishment to Domitian, Epiphanius’s testimony cannot be so lightly dismissed, for he ‘doubtless hath followed the most Ancient Doctors’. Peganius’s solution is to claim that there were two banishments. The first under Claudius is when the Apocalypse was written, ‘since there are found so many clear Testimonies, that this Book was written before the Destruction of Jerusalem’. However, John may not have completed his book until returning to Ephesus after the second, Domitianic exile.25 An alternative Neronian dating, attested in two early Syriac versions, is also proposed in this period. The marginal note on Rev. 1:9 in the first edition (1582) of the Catholic Rheims New Testament, produced by Gregory Martin while the English College of Douai was temporarily exiled to Rheims, lists both possibilities: ‘Banished thither for religion by Nero, or rather by Domitian, almost 60 yeres after Christes Ascensiõ.’26 Both Sir Isaac Newton (1643–1727) and his namesake, the Anglican Bishop Thomas Newton of Bristol (1704–1782), opt for a Neronian dating for the Patmos exile and the writing of the Apocalypse. Indeed, Sir Isaac’s survey of the patristic evidence led him

21 Bossuet 1741: 8–10. Bossuet’s interpretation of the Apocalypse has been described as ‘the most fertile of the Catholic world in the seventeenth century’: Armogathe 2000: 195. 22 Whiston 1706: 32–3. 23 Williams 1873: 13. 24 E.g. Grotius 1830: 243–4. See also Wainwright 1993: 63. 25 Peganius 1670: 63–4. 26 Martin 1582: 699.

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to the conclusion that the Neronian dating was the tradition of the ‘first Churches’.27 Finally, we find a dating in the turbulent period following Nero’s death. The appropriateness of this earlier dating is eloquently expressed by Dean Arthur Stanley, in a sermon preached in Westminster Abbey on 17 December 1871 (entitled ‘The Trumpet of Patmos’): The long peace which had prevailed throughout the world down to the death of the Emperor Nero had just been broken up. It was the epoch which the Roman historian describes as ‘teeming with disasters, terrible in war, rent with faction, savage even in peace’. From the Northern Ocean to the Ægean coasts, all was in confusion and alarm—wars and rumours of wars, earthquakes, volcanoes, armies marching and countermarching, the fall of Jerusalem, the burning of Rome, the overthrow of the cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii, the barbarians hanging on the frontier, dynasty after dynasty succeeding each other on the imperial throne, ‘the powers of heaven shaken, men’s hearts failing them for fear of those things that were coming on the earth’.28

In lectures originally delivered at Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1879, Professor Fenton Hort expresses his growing preference for a date either in, or probably just after, the reign of Nero, perhaps early in Vespasian’s reign: ‘The whole language about Rome and the empire, Babylon and the beast, fits the last days of Nero and the time immediately following, and does not fit the short local reign of terror under Domitian.’29

Reason for John’s Exile Along with the Domitianic dating, the exile thesis regains its dominant position in this period. Jean Taffin is typical of many in appealing to the testimony of Church historians and other early sources: ‘We read in the ecclesiastical histories that he was banished during Domitian’s reign.’30 Edward Waple’s 1693 paraphrase of Rev. 1:9 indicates the extent to which what many consider to be the ‘plain sense’, that John was sentenced to banishment on the island, itself relies on a paraphrastic interpretation of the verse: John ‘was [in Banishment] in the Isle that is called Patmos, for [preaching] the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ [i.e. the Gospel]’.31 27 Newton 1733: 235–8. On Bishop Newton, see Newton 1758: 13–16; see also Ewald 1828: 96; Desprez 1870: 42. The Revd James Ivory Holmes offers a robust defence of the Domitianic dating against both Newtons: Holmes 1815: I, 5–6. 28 Stanley 1872: 24–5. 29 Hort 1908: xxvi. 30 ‘Nous lisons aux histoires Ecclesiastiques, qu’il y fut confiné durant l’Empire de Domitian . . . ’: Taffin 1609: 18–19. 31 Waple 1693:10. See also e.g. Muggleton 1665: 18.

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Commentators on both sides of the Reformation divide (e.g. Bullinger, Hoe, Lapide, Foxe) follow their patristic and medieval predecessors in linking the Patmos exile closely with the boiling oil episode in Rome, despite its nonscriptural origins.32 This is attested not only in scholarly commentaries and lectures, but also in preaching at a popular level. Hezekiah Holland, ‘minister of the gospel’ at Sutton Valence in Kent, relates how ‘Domitian the Emperor first cast him into a Caldron of boyling oyle, but receiving no hurt, banished him into this Isle, where he received this Vision’.33 The Revd James Murray of Newcastle appeals to the same scene, for all its miraculous properties and hagiographical details, as a ‘piece of history’ which has been universally received by Christians since Tertullian’s testimony, ‘till some of the Deistical writers, with a design to discredit the apostle himself, have denied the truth of this story’.34 For many, the exile interpretation has theological as well as historical significance. The early Puritan William Fulke (1536/7–1589) uses it to oppose rival interpretations of Patmos which exploit its solitary position as justification for Christian monasticism: Hee sheweth that the preachinge of the woorde of God and the Gospell of Iesus, was the cause of this his banishment, not that he wold willingly seke any solitarie place their [sic] to dwell in, as now of later time the Monkes, the Heremites Anachorts & other solicarie persons haue used to do, for whõ it had bene more meter, if they had bene able, or if it had bene lawfull for them, to haue giuen there diligent attendance in declaring Gods woorde and preaching Christes Gospell, in the greatest and most famouse cities, if they would truly haue immitated S. Iohn.35

Indeed, Fulke is keen to challenge not only the monastic life, but the Catholic veneration of holy places. On the contrary, ‘the baseness or deformitie of anye place’ is no impediment to Christ’s followers being ‘drawne up into the secretes of the heuenly glory’. John’s visions on Patmos, Peter’s on the roof of a tanner’s house and in prison, and Paul’s ‘in a torne shippe’ are cited in support of this Protestant conviction.36 Some later interpreters anticipate the interests of 20th-century commentators in considering the implications of ‘exile’ to Patmos for John’s social status. Albert Barnes, in his 1852 Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Book of Revelation, contrasts the sentencing of the ‘more base, low, and vile of criminals’ to work in the mines, and that imposed on ‘the more decent and

32 33 34 35 36

E.g. Bullinger 1573: 13r; Hoe 1610: I, 104; Lapide 1627: 3; Foxe 1839: 16. Holland 1650: 6. Murray 1778: I, 47. Fulke 1573: 4. Fulke 1573: 4 (commenting on Rev. 1:10). See also Brown 2004: 154–63.

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respectable’, who like John ‘were banished to some likely island’.37 He seems unaware of the interpretation of Victorinus, which combines both aspects. C. E. Fraser-Tytler also notes that ‘John, being unfitted for the mines, was banished at the age of ninety to Patmos, a small barren island in the Archipelago, belonging to a cluster called the Sporades’.38 Although not explicit, he presumably relates this being ‘unfitted’ to John’s place on the social hierarchy rather than to his age alone. One unusual footnote to biographical interest in John’s exile to Patmos is found in Robert Skeen’s lectures on Revelation, delivered in the Moravian Chapel in Fetter Lane, London, in 1853. Skeen understands the ‘seven angels’ to be a deputation from the seven churches: The Churches are named according to their position with regard to Patmos, Ephesus being the nearest. It is highly probable that such messengers were sent from time to time to minister to the wants of the Apostle in that barren island, and also to seek his advice in such cases of difficulty or of heresy as might arise in the bosom of the Church. . . . there was little intercourse between Patmos and the main-land; but by assembling at Ephesus, the nearest port, it would not be difficult to hire a small vessel for their special use.39

Alternative explanations are also considered by some for the ambiguous phrase ‘for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus’. Although himself accepting the testimony of ‘ancient histories’ that Domitian banished John to Patmos, George Giffard considers the alternative missionary possibility in his 1596 Sermons upon the Whole Booke of the Revelation: . . . and the next words do seeme manifestly to expresse so much, I meane that he was banished thither for the Gospell, when he sayth, For the worde of God, and for the witnessing of Jesus Christ. It may bee sayd that he was there to preach the word of God; but the phrase seemeth rather to expresse the former sense.40

Another interpreter to note the ambiguity of Rev. 1:9 is Thomas Brightman in his 1609 commentary: ‘But you may observe, that Iohn hath not expresly made mention of his banishing into this Isle, but onely of his being there, as who would shew his modesty in induring, not his boasting in aggravating in any proud maner his calamity.’41 Nevertheless, Brightman personally accepts the ancient view that John was ‘exiled thither by the tyranny of Domitian’.42

37

Barnes 1852: 70. Fraser-Tytler 1852: 132. 39 Skeen 1857: 10–11. 40 Giffard 1596: 24. 41 Brightman 1644: 7. 42 So also J. Trapp: ‘He tels us not how he came thither, he boasteth not of his banishment’: Trapp 1647: 495. 38

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Similarly, David Pareus, former Professor of Divinity in Heidelberg, says of John that: ‘For what cause, and in what condition he was, being there, he mentioneth not.’43 The Domitianic tradition Pareus links to Eusebius, Jerome, ‘and others’. Others are more forthright: in his commentary on the Apocalypse, the Göttingen biblical scholar Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1752–1827) defends the deportation hypothesis against the missionary alternative whereby John sought out Patmos freely in order to preach Christian doctrine.44 In his 1896 commentary Wilhelm Bousset, having discussed the visionary and missionary alternatives, also comes down in favour of the traditional theory of Domitianic exile as ‘the correct interpretation’.45 A few commentators are bolder in embracing a minority interpretation of ‘on account of the word of God etc’. J. Napier’s 1593 A Plaine Discouery of the whole Reuelation of Sainct Iohn interprets the phrase in terms of flight rather than enforced exile. He paraphrases Rev. 1:9 as ‘I Iohn . . . was fugitiue in only of the yles of the Sporades, called Pathmos, for professing the worde of God, and for bearing true testimonie of Christ Iesus’.46 This reading is reinforced in Napier’s accompanying notes: ‘Herein hid S. Iohn himself from the great tyrannie and persecution of Domitian, where he abode vntil Domitian died.’47 Napier’s commentary was dedicated to King James I (James VI of Scotland). Thus is it not unexpected to find a similar interpretation in the King’s own paraphrase of the Apocalypse, published in 1616: I Iohn, your brother in the flesh, and companion with you, aswell in the seruice of Christ, as in the patientsuffering of the Crosse, being for that word of God and witnessing of Christ, whereof I spake, so persecuted, that for safety of my life I was constrained to flie all alone to the solitarie Ile of Pathmos.48

Similarly, Thomas Mason’s 1619 commentary presents John as choosing flight to escape persecution elsewhere: ‘In that by persecutions hee was faine to leaue his Churches, and to saue himself in a desolate place, he might think that God had forsaken his faithfull Churches, and him his faithfull seruant, but wee know that all things work for the best for Gods children.’49 The Flemish Jesuit scholar Cornelius van den Steen (1567–1637), better known by his humanist name à Lapide,50 accepts the tradition of Domitianic 43

Pareus 1644: 19. Non igitur ad exponendam doctrinam christianam Patmum sponte petiisse Ioannes credendus est: Eichhorn 1791: 37. Others who acknowledge the ambiguity of the phrase and alternative solutions to the preferred option of exile include Ewald 1828: 94–5; Barnes 1852: 70. 45 ‘Die richtige Erklärung’: Bousset 1896: 222–3. 46 Napier 1593: 72–3. 47 Napier 1593: 77. 48 James I 1616: 8. On the King’s apocalyptic interests, and his interpretation of contemporary events in the light of the Apocalypse, see Firth 1979: 131–4; Dobin 1990: 58–60. 49 Mason 1619: 4. 50 Bedouelle 2009: 439. 44

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relegatio. Nevertheless, he also exploits the missionary potential inherent in propter verbum Dei etc. (an interpretation rare in the West, in contrast to the eastern Prochorus Acts which describe the success of his preaching among the Patmians). Commenting on Rev. 1:9, à Lapide refers to the mass conversion to the Christian gospel on the part of the islanders (omnes insulanos in Patmos a S. Iohanne conuersos fuisse ad Christum).51 His source for this rare tradition is unsurprisingly Greek: Baronius’s citation of Simeon Metaphrastes, the 10thcentury Byzantine author who seems to know the Prochorus Acts or similar traditions.52 A robust advocate of the view that John went to Patmos in search of visionary experience is James Kelly, minister of Charlotte Chapel in Pimlico, whose 1847 Apocalyptic Interpretation is a critique of E. B. Elliott’s historicizing interpretation. Kelly regards Paul’s reference to his ‘revelation of Jesus Christ’ at Gal. 1:12 (closely juxtaposed to his journey to Arabia) to be the key to John’s sojourn on Patmos, whereas the tradition of banishment by Domitian is dismissed as unreliable: And this elucidates the meaning of the beloved disciple in this very book, when he says, ‘I was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ’—(Chap. i. 9). Paul went into Arabia to enjoy his ’REVELATION’ of Christ, wherein he was taught the mystery of the Church’s calling under this dispensation. And John was in Patmos, in order to the similar purpose of receiving this ‘REVELATION,’ which he has given to us. The view that so commonly obtains, and which Mr. Elliott has adopted, that John was penally banished to Patmos by the Emperor Domitian, rests, I believe, only on uncertain tradition. At all events, even if true, the Holy Ghost has not deemed it worthy of notice; but assigns as the cause of this isolated position of his servant, his own end, that he might receive and record the visions, &c., there presented to him, of which Jesus, in his personal glory, was the centre.53

Kelly’s reasons for dismissing the Domitian tradition are based on the internal evidence of the text. The earlier reference to the phrase ‘the word of God and the testimony of Jesus’ (Rev. 1:2) is placed in apposition with ‘all things which he saw’. ‘Now it is absurd to say’, Kelly continues, ‘that John was banished to Patmos, on account of the things which he saw in Patmos! And yet into the blunder, by not comparing together verses 2 and 9, Mr Elliott has fallen.’54

51

Latin text in Lapide 1627: 23 Simeon Metaphrastes, ed. Migne 1864: 692–3. 53 Kelly 1847: 58–9. He also rejects the missionary explanation, agreeing with Elliott that it is ‘incongruous with the uninhabited character of the island.’ 54 Kelly 1847: 60. 52

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Biographical Reconstruction and Use of the Imagination Renewed focus on the biography of John draws attention to the role of the imagination in reconstructions of Patmos, a dimension which will remain indispensable (although not always consciously so) for later historical-critical interpretations, which represent ‘an extraordinary enterprise of imaginative collaboration’.55 This is perhaps to be expected in sermons and homilies, designed to appeal to the imaginations and emotions of the congregation, but it is no less present in commentaries and lectures. As their raw materials, interpreters have the received descriptions of Patmos by their predecessors, which draw upon different strands in the history of reception. Increasingly, there are also written reports of visitors to Patmos, which provide evidence of greater knowledge of local topography and sacred sites, such as the Monastery of St John and the association of John’s vision with the cave. The German Reformed theologian Frederic Adolphus Krummacher (1767– 1845) includes a parable on Patmos in his famous Parabeln of 1805. He imagines a consoling vision received by John of Raphael and Salem, his two guardian angels, after his anguished first night spent on a rock on his exile of Patmos, and as heaven-sent preparation for the visionary experience described in his Apocalypse. John recounts to the angelic visitors the reasons for his mourning: that the ‘Tyrant slays the converts to the truth by thousands’, and that he faces ‘this separation from my brethren and fellow sufferers whom I love!’ Raphael then touches his forehead, causing his eyes to be opened enabling a vision of the Holy of Holies through the gloomy clouds. ‘Then arose the spirit of the Exile, no longer fettered by the sea girt Patmos, but soaring upon the wings of inspiration.’56 Edward Irving (1792–1834), the Scottish preacher and key influence on the Catholic Apostolic Church, also exemplifies this imaginative creation of a Patmos environment in a series of lectures delivered in Edinburgh in May 1829. He tells his congregation how, on the Lord’s day, ‘the holy seer— dwelling apart, haply, in some solitude of Patmos, or in some dungeon immured—was visited with this glorious succession of visions, some on earth, and some in heaven . . . ’.57 In a similar fashion, Alfred Jenour imagines the beloved apostle ‘sitting alone and solitary in a cave, or in a prison-house, suddenly wrapt in the Spirit’, while the Revd W. R. Stephens, British Chaplain

55 56 57

Roberts and Rowland 2008: 42; see also Lyons 2010: 215–16. Krummacher 1839: 25–6. Irving 1831: 197.

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at Brussels, paints this pious portrait of the apostle on Patmos on the Lord’s day: ‘John, probably in his island prison, had, though a solitary worshipper, sought communion with his Lord.’58 In his 1848 Hulsean Lectures on the Apocalypse, Christopher Wordsworth, nephew of the poet and at this stage Canon of Westminster, paints a vivid portrait of a barren landscape which echoes some medieval exegetes in presenting the state of the island as a parable of the Church’s tribulations: All his brother Apostles had now been taken away by death. He was left the last. He was now a prisoner and an exile in a lonely island. As the winds blew, and as the waves dashed on the rocky shores of Patmos, so the storms of the world were now beating against the rock of the Church. But the aged and lonely Apostle was cheered with glorious visions.59

In Wordsworth’s imagination, the heavenly vision transforms ‘the barren cliffs of Patmos’ into a landscape ‘more beautiful than Paradise’. He then utilizes this transformed Patmos as an interpretative lens whereby his Victorian audience might interpret their own circumstances, reflecting a particular perception of the 19th century as a time of turbulence and instability, both political and religious: What, therefore, my Christian friends and brethren, can be more full of comfort to us than the view which this subject presents? Heaven is our home: here on earth we are exiles; we are in Patmos. Especially, in these our days, the heavens are dark; the sea is high; the waves dash upon the rock: the floods are risen, O Lord; the floods have lift up their voice. Ours is an age of storms. The beach below us is strewn with wrecks—the wrecks of Empires. Yet in this dark gloom of the world, in this our solitude and exile, we may have inward peace, and light and hope and joy. If we love Christ with St. John, if we suffer for Christ with him, we too, like St. John, shall be visited by Christ. Then St. John’s Visions will be ours. His Revelation will be ours. Our Patmos, will be Paradise.60

For Wordsworth, Patmos functions as a symbol for the earthly exile of contemporary Christian existence, battered by the sea and the waves of 19th-century turmoil, yet which may also become a ‘Paradise’ through fidelity in suffering. The parallels with medieval exegesis of Patmos as fretum and vorago are striking.

58

Jenour 1852: 75; Stephens 1882: 4. Jenour 1852: 27–8. Wordsworth had previously been Public Orator at Cambridge, and later became Bishop of Lincoln: see Perry and Overton 1900: 369–76. 60 Wordsworth 1852: 29; the quotation is from Ps. 93:4. 59

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GEOGRAPHICAL AND TOPOGRAPHICAL INTEREST IN PATMOS Coupled with the biographical concern is a growing interest in locating John’s island geographically, and exploring its size and topography, often with a view to drawing wider significance from the facts. Appeal is frequently made to classical sources, especially those of Pliny and Strabo.

Geographical Location John Bale’s paraphrase of Rev. 1:9 in his The Image of Bothe Churches (1540s) has St John describe how he was ‘now of late in a certen yle of Licia called Pathmos’.61 This is a somewhat surprising designation. Licia, or Lycia, was the mountainous area of south-western Asia Minor, too far south to claim authority over Patmos. This privilege belonged rather to Miletus in Ionia, further north on the western Aegean coast. Despite this imprecision, however, Bale has correctly identified the island’s general geographical location, close to the coast of Asia Minor. Other commentators, such as J. Foord (1597), M. Cotterius (1615), and D. Pareus (1644) are more precise in its maritime location: in mari Ægeo.62 A marginal note to Augustine Marlorate’s 1561 exposition of Revelation identifies Patmos according to its contemporary name, found also in maps of the period: ‘It is now called Palmosa.’63 Palmosa, the place ‘abounding in palm trees’, is a name attested in Venetian sources from the 14th century onwards, as in the illustrations to Benedetto Bordone’s Isolario (1534) and Giuseppe Rosaccio’s Viaggio (1598).64 It probably reflects the flora of the island in this period (in contrast to the treeless state encountered by Christodoulos when he arrived in 1088). Knowledge of this alternative name may also be reflected in visual art: examples include the 14th-century Neapolitan altar-panels, now in Stuttgart’s Staatsgalerie, where Patmos has a single large palm-tree, and, most strikingly, Hans Burgkmair the Elder’s St John the Evangelist in Patmos (see Chapter 7). Reflecting the early-modern interest in classical sources, Heinrich Bullinger, successor to Zwingli at Zurich, appeals to Pliny in order to locate the island geographically. In his Hundred Sermons upon the Apocalips of Jesu Christe 61

Bale 1973, on Rev. 1:9. Foord 1597: 7; Cotterius 1615: 31; Pareus 1644: 18–19. 63 Marlorate 1574: 17b; on Marlorate and his interpretation of Revelation, see Backus 2000: 28–9, 61–6. This alternative name is regularly repeated by commentators in this period, with an eye to its contemporary geographical identification: e.g. Eichhorn 1791: 36; Murray 178: I, 46. 64 Patitucci 2005: 256, 279, fig. 2, and 280, fig. 3. 62

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(first Latin edition 1557; English translation 1561), he follows Pliny ‘in the xij. chapter of his iiij. Booke’ in placing Patmos among the Sporades group.65 The Pliny passage (see Appendix 2) is an important one for 16th- and 17th-century commentators. So too is the related passage from Strabo, which is more precise in locating Patmos in the vicinity of Leros, the Corassiae, Icaria, and Samos.66 The name Sporades (‘scattered’) incorporated a number of island groups, ranging from Skiathos and Skopelos in the western Aegean to the group, including Patmos, now known as the Dodecanese (formerly the Southern Sporades). Patmos’s location within the Sporades is regularly repeated by commentators of this period; e.g. the Protestants Franciscus Junius (1591) and Matthias Hoe (1610),67 and the Catholic Blasius Viegas (commentary posthumously published in 1601). Viegas adds that the group of islands is now called the Archipelago, and is near to Rhodes (est pręterea ea insula vicina Rhodo), while Jacobus Tirinus, although identifying Patmos as ‘one of the Sporades’, also claims that it is ‘not far from’ Crete (non longe a Candia sive Creta).68 Despite Pliny’s definitive identification of Patmos among the Sporades, several commentators link Patmos to a different island group, the Cyclades further to the west (so-called because these islands ‘encircle’ Apollo’s sacred island of Delos).69 M. Cotterius notes in his 1615 commentary: ‘The island of Patmos is in the Aegean Sea, one of the Cyclades’ (Patmos insula est in mari Ægeo, una ex Cycladibus).70 A similar claim is made by H. Kromayer (1662): Locus est Patmus maris Ægaei, una ex Cycladibus . . . 71 The geographical interest of the Lutheran David Chytraeus (or Kochhaf) in his 1563 Explicatio Apocalypsis Ioannis Perspica et Brevis, extends to distances from mainland cities: The place in which this Revelation is shown to John, is the island of Patmos [Insula Pathmus], which is in the Aegean Sea, one of the Sporades (though properly called the Cyclades [nam Cyclades proprie dicuntur], which surround

65

Bullinger 1573: 13v. E.g. Aretius 1596: 556; Hoe 1610: I, 104; Eichhorn 1791: 36; Heinrichs 1818: 131. 67 Junius 1592, on Rev. 1:9; Hoe 1610: I, 104. 68 Viegas 1601: 56; Tirinus in Vulgate 1575: 19 (Candia is the Venetian name for Heraklion). Others who locate Patmos in the Sporades include Bibliander 1545: 127; Artopoeus 1563: 15; Vulgate 1575: 8; Aretius 1596: 556; Mariana 1620: 885; Barnes 1852: 68. 69 This is even the case with those who are dependent on both Pliny and Strabo: e.g. Winckelmann 1601: 35–6. However, there is evidence from the classical period for the same island being included by different authors either in the Sporades or the Cyclades: see Smith 1851: 832. 70 Cotterius 1615: 31. 71 Kromayer 1674: 28. Others who locate Patmos in the Cyclades include Cotterius 1615: 32; Culbertson 1826: I, 104. Johannes van den Honert discusses whether Patmos should be located in the Cyclades or Sporades: Honert 1736: 88–93. 66

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Delos), and almost equidistant from Ephesus and Miletus, that is, approximately fifteen German miles.72

Further, he tells us that Patmos was Leriae vicinam, ‘close to Leros’, an island located a few miles to the south-east. Even more detailed is the 1609 commentary of Thomas Brightman. Brightman knows the contemporary name Palmosa, but rejects it as an accurate description of Patmos in John’s day, given Strabo’s silence about palm groves on the island: Patmos. It is an Ile of the Icarian Sea, thirty miles about in compasse, at this day called Palmosa, as the latter Geographers will have it; But in Strabo there is nothing of it memorable, besides the name. He is wont to make diligent relation and description of the very Groves where Palmes grow, if there be any such, much rather would have recorded such great store of them, as should have made an Iland famous; and thence we may justly suspect that name, unlesse the latter age perhaps should have made it more happy by such fertilenesse.73

Brightman also mentions the proposal, made by Sebastian Munster in his edition of Ptolemy’s Geography,74 and known to the Jesuit Francisco Ribera in his commentary,75 that Patmos is to be identified with Possidium, a promontory mentioned among the islands of the Icarian Sea (Icaria being an island to the west of Samos, and north-west of Patmos): Munster thinketh, that Pathmos is that Possidium wherof Ptolomy writes in his Geographicall Tables, Book 5. Chap. 2. But Possidium there is a Promontory of the Ile Chios, hard by the City of Chios, vvhence they sail round about the Ile, and are situate on the right hand of it. Strabo in his 14. Book. Now Patmus together with the Corassians lyeth to the west of Icaria, these to the west of Samos. Strabo in his 10. Book.76

Size and Topography Several commentators are interested in the island’s size and character, following strands already found in earlier authors. William Fulke, in his 1573 Praelections, describes Patmos as ‘a litle, desert, barrain and unpleasant 72 Latin text in Chytraeus 1575: 39. On Chytraeus’s interpretation of Revelation, see Backus 2000: 113–29. 73 Brightman 1644: 7. Moses Stuart of Andover Theological Seminary, Massachusetts, will maintain that Palmosa is a misattribution of its modern name: ‘It is now called Patino or Patmosa (not Palmosa or Patmo, as Winer has it in his Bib. Lex.)’: Stuart 1847: 445. 74 Ptolemy 1542, V.II: 85. 75 ‘Patmos insula est in mari Icario, quam quidam Posidium vocatum putant a Ptolemaeo lib. 5. cap. 2’: Ribera 1591, on Rev. 1:9. 76 Brightman 1644: 7. Brightman, following Strabo, incorrectly locates Patmos west of Icaria.

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iland of the sea of Aegium’.77 Thomas Brightman notes that ‘The Isle it self seems to be almost desert, and without Inhabitants’.78 For Thomas Mason (1619), Patmos is ‘this desolate place’, where John ‘seeth more comfort than euer he did, and receiueth the greatest Reuelation that euer was, and most beneficiall to the comfort and direction of the Church to the end of the world’.79 Hugo Grotius notes the similarity between Patmos and other islands used for banishment in the Roman world, such as Seriphus, Gyarus, Amargus, Cercina, and Pandateria.80 Bossuet describes Patmos as ‘an island so wretched and so distant from all trade’,81 whilst the Revd James Murray of Newcastle notes how ‘our latest geographers inform us, that it is totally barren and dreary, and deserves rather the name of a rock, than that of an island’.82 John Snodgrass, minister of the Middle Church of Paisley, speaks in a similar vein in lectures delivered to his congregation between 1792 and 1796: ‘Its surface is mountainous, and its soil is rocky and barren.’83 For Albert Barnes (in his 1852 Notes), it is the perfect location for imperial banishment: ‘Lonely, desolate, barren, uninhabited, seldom visited, it had all the requisites which could be desired for a place of punishment, and banishment to that place would accomplish all that a persecutor could wish in silencing an apostle, without putting him to death.’84 Robert Culbertson, minister of Leith, adds a geological interest to his lecture on ‘The Time and Place of the Apocalyptic Visions’: ‘There is not a spot in the Archipelago which has more the appearance of a volcanic origin than Patmos. Different parts have the semblance of craters, and substances resembling lava are common among the fragments of the rocks.’85 Occasionally one finds the suggestion that John’s visionary apprehension was influenced by his physical surroundings on Patmos. One such example comes from Luís de Alcázar’s 1614 Vestigatio Arcani Sensus in Apocalypsi. Although he moves straight from verse 8 to verse 10 in his commentary on Rev. 1, Alcázar makes a link between Patmos and the voice of the Son of Man, ‘like the sound of many waters’ (Rev. 1:15). The immediate intertextual resonance is to Ezek. 1:24. However, Alcázar sees a direct connection with John’s location: ‘since John was on the island of Pathmos, where he would always hear the sound of the sea’ (quia Ioannes erat in insula Pathmo, vbi semper audiebat maris sonitum).86

77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86

Fulke 1573: 3. Brightman 1644: 7. Mason 1619: 4–5. Grotius 1830: 243. ‘une Isle aussi misérable & aussi éloignée de tout commerce’: Bossuet 1741: 10. Murray 1778: I, 46–7. Snodgrass 1799: 90. Barnes 1852: 70. Culbertson 1826: I, 104–5. Alcázar 1614: 209.

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A more extensive claim is made by Dean Arthur Stanley, in his 1871 sermon ‘The Trumpet of Patmos’. Stanley, who had travelled to Patmos in the company of the Prince of Wales in the spring of 1862, maintains that: . . . as in all the prophetic visions of the Bible, the outward imagery is taken from the objects and circumstances immediately at hand and around. Not only do the bright sky, the wide sea, the lofty mountains, the grotesque rocks, the sandy beach, of Patmos and the adjacent islands enter into the picture, but the whole tissue of the visions themselves is drawn from the events with which the atmosphere of that portentous time was charged.87

Significance of Geography and Topography Interest in the location and state of Patmos, however, is often more than geographical, especially for Protestant commentators and preachers. Mention has been made already of William Fulke’s evaluation of the Patmos tradition which rejects Catholic focus on monasticism and holy places. Another Protestant commentator to exploit the polemical potential of Patmos is the Swiss exegete Theodor Bibliander (1506–1564), who delivered lectures on the Apocalypse in Zurich from December 1543, which were subsequently abbreviated for publication.88 Bibliander notes the fact that John wrote the book, not in the seat of papal power, but far from the centre on marginal Patmos. With a degree of poetic licence, however, he places Patmos on his imaginative map as an alternative ‘centre’ to Rome, at the meeting point of three continents: Nor was it written by a secretary of the venal curia, but by John the apostle and Ephesian bishop, and kinsman of the Messiah, chief scribe and supreme chancellor of the Christian kingdom and pontificate [archigrãmateo & supremo cãcellario regni & põtificatus Christiani], on the island of Patmos, as if in the sanctuary and common archives of Asia, Africa and Europe [ueluti sanctuario & tablino communi Asiae, Aphricae, & Europae] . . .89

Heinrich Bullinger draws on Bibliander in his sermon, preached in Zurich in 1554, which similarly locates Patmos ‘in the sight both of Europe and Affrike, so that it seemed to be as it were a middle seate, or holy chayre for Christ to preach out of, from heauĕ to y whole world, by John’. John is an exemplar for God’s faithful ones, who find themselves ‘as it were in the Romishe prison or Babilonicall captiuitie’.90 87

Stanley 1872: 24. On the impact of Patmos during the visit with the Prince of Wales, see also Stanley 1863: 93–9, 225–31. 88 See Backus 2000: 94–102. 89 Bibliander 1545: 188. 90 Bullinger 1573: 13v.

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Hugh Broughton’s 1610 commentary (dedicated to ‘the Mighty Prince, Iames’, i.e. James I), also makes theological capital out of the size and remote location of John’s island. Broughton writes of ‘obscure Patmos’, from which John teaches that ‘the base corners shall have truth’. Patmos is to be contrasted with apparently great papal Rome, which banished John to Patmos, but which shall be ‘left in Satans throne’.91 Likewise, in his commentary on Rev. 4, Broughton again exploits the obscurity of the island, suggesting the possibility that contemporary ‘outsiders’ might actualize John’s Patmos experience: ‘Thus we shall see God sitting vpon a throne; when Christ frõ obscure Patmos sheweth that heaven is not best seen from great cities: which all wayes overflow in wickednes: but from place where fewest be to disturbe.’92 Matthaeus Cotterius’s 1615 commentary asks rhetorically why the Apocalypse was received in Patmos, an island of the Gentiles, rather than in Judea (Cur non in Iudae sed in Gentilium terra, & in insula, & in Cycladũ una, & in hac cui nomen Patmos data sit Apocalypsis). This, he states, has been necessitated by the ‘destruction’ of Jerusalem and her people. Moreover, the writing of the book to the seven churches is appropriately undertaken on an island, separated from the places where those churches dwelt, in the ‘undistinguished and harsh islands’ (Insulae ignobiles . . . & aspere) of the Cyclades.93 Edward Waple acknowledges the relationship between the nations and the islands, making Patmos an appropriate location for the unveiling of the Apocalypse’s universal message. In his comment on Rev. 10:2 (the mighty angel with his right foot on the sea), Waple notes that ‘Scripture calls all the places to which the Jews were to pass by sea “Islands”’, ‘and particularly our European Parts, at least those in the Archipelago, the Islands of the Gentiles, Gen. 10.5’.94 Finally, James Durham’s commentary, first published in 1658 during Cromwell’s Protectorate, appeals to John’s solitude on Patmos to provide consolation for Christians of later centuries who might experience a similar fate:95 SOLITARINESS for Christ, is not the worst Condition. Christ can make up that another way: and if there be a Necessity of withdrawing Men from their Duty, as of Ministers from the publick Ministery, he can make it tend as much to their private Benefit, and to the publick Good of his Church, if not more: neither doth John lose any thing by his Banishment and Confinement; for, he finds more intimate and sweet Communion and Fellowship with Christ, and gets more of his

91

Broughton 1610: 3. Broughton 1610: 4. Broughton was living outside England in Middleburg when he wrote these words, only returning to his homeland in 1611. 93 Cotterius 1615: 32, Prooemium, on Rev. 1:9. 94 Waple 1693: 167–8. 95 On Durham’s commentary, see Cameron 1994. 92

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Mind: nor doth the Church lose any thing by it; for, she gets this Revelation of God’s Mind.96

The theological significance drawn by Catholic exegetes is rather different. Some exploit the medieval tradition which correlates the physical constraints of Patmos with the unrestricted access it affords to heavenly mysteries. Peter Bulengerus’s 1589 commentary describes Patmos as ‘a small island of the Aegean sea’ (exigua Aegaei maris insula), where John received revelation while in contemplation on the Lord’s Day, when the Christian people is accustomed to gather to receive the Lord’s body.97 The wasted desert of Patmos thereby becomes a temple, where John pours out prayers on behalf of the Church from which he is physically separated.98 John himself is presented as a type of anyone who suffers adversities ‘on account of the Son of God, and the Catholic teaching of the holy Roman Church’.99 Francisco Ribera also combines attention to the geographical location of Patmos (citing Ptolemy and Pliny) with Bede’s comment, derived from Primasius, about the heavenly privileges accorded by this location.100 A similar point is made by his fellow Jesuit Blasius Viegas (1554–1599), citing Ambrose Autpert.101 In contrast to Protestant anti-monastic interpretations, Viegas exploits the monastic connection in his comments on Patmos. He notes the contemporary monastic presence on the island, and the fact that the Greek monks follow the rule of St Basil. Following medieval precedents, he then shows how John’s exile on Patmos fulfils the prophecy of Hos. 2, according to which God will lead Israel ‘into solitude’ and speak to her heart in contemplation. With a string of Old Testament allusions, Viegas draws further parallels between John’s Patmos experience and that of Moses at the burning bush (Exod. 3), Jacob at Bethel (Gen. 28), and Elijah on Horeb (1 Kgs 19). Finally, he extols the virtues of the eremitic life, of which Patmos is now a type, citing directly from Basil himself:

96

Durham 1739: 25. ‘ . . . ad pie & religiose participandum sacrosanctum domini corpus & sanguis’: Latin text in Bulengerus 1589: 19b. 98 ‘Cumque in vasta illa eremo, velut in templo, preces pro ecclesia funderem’: Bulengerus 1589: 19b-20a. 99 ‘beatus est quisquis propter filium Dei, & Catholicã sanctae Romae ecclesiae doctrinam aduersis rebus premitur’: Bulengerus 1589: 23a. 100 ‘Cui tunc congrue datum est secreta coeli penetrare, cum certa terrarum spatia negabatur excedere’: Ribera 1591, on Rev. 1:9. This Primasian passage is not unique to Catholic exegetes; as noted above, it is used by Sebastian Meyer. 101 Viegas 1601: 56. 97

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The solitary life is the school of heavenly doctrine, the instruction into the divine arts, the paradise of delights [Solitaria vita caelestis doctrinae schola est, diuinarum artium disciplina, paradisus deliciarum] . . .102

Cornelius à Lapide also sees a typological relationship with Moses and Jacob. The link is strengthened further by the theme of persecution and flight: Moses was fleeing from Pharaoh, Jacob from his brother Esau, just as John suffered persecution from Domitian. À Lapide add two further scenes: Ezekiel seeing the heavenly throne-chariot while in Babylonian exile (Ezek. 1:4–28), and the stoning of Stephen, where the martyr has a vision of the Son of Man echoing John’s own on Patmos (Acts 7:56).103 His fellow Jesuit Alfonso Salmeron presents Joseph in prison, Daniel in captivity, and persecuted Jeremiah as antecedents to John on his Patmos exile.104 This typological appeal to Old Testament antecedents is not unique to Catholic exegetes, however. Edward Waple, in his 1693 The Book of the Revelation Paraphrased, reminds his readers that ‘as Ezekiel and Daniel had their Visions when they were in Captivity; so also might it be, by way of Correspondence, Ordained by God, that John should receive this Prophecy in a place of Exile; Restraints, and places of Recess, and Retirement from the wicked World, affording the fittest dispositions, and opportunities for Divine Communications’.105

PATMOS AND PERSECUTION Interest in Patmos as destination of the exiled visionary receives a particular edge in the cut and thrust of Reformation polemics and homiletics. According to Richard Bauckham, one of the most pressing theological concerns for 16thcentury exegetes, especially commentators on the Apocalypse, was to address the problems posed by persecution, and the suffering of God’s people.106 Thus, like patristic writers such as Tertullian and Victorinus who read the Apocalypse in the face of imperial hostility, theirs is no disengaged interpretation. The tradition of John’s exile by Domitian is brought into service for a new but parallel situation, providing an interpretative lens which enabled suffering Christians of the 16th century and beyond to find meaning in their circumstances. This is reflected both in commentaries and in published sermons, the

102 103 104 105 106

Latin text in Viegas 1601: 57. Lapide 1627: 23. Salmeron 1604: 351. Waple 1693: 10. See also Burder 1849: 11–12 (Ezekiel); MacDuff 1871 (Jacob at Bethel). On this see Bauckham 1978.

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latter genre being particularly appropriate for inviting contemporary participation in the Patmos experience. An early example is the first major Protestant commentary on Revelation by François Lambert (1528), based on lectures delivered in Marburg in 1527.107 Lambert (1486–1530), a former Franciscan of Avignon, embraced the Reformation after a meeting with Zwingli in 1522. He viewed the Apocalypse as a text prophesying the Reformation,108 and his comments on Rev. 1:9 exploit the patristic tradition of John’s relegatio so as to invite comparison with contemporary events. Not only did John receive divine revelation in a state of exile, it was in the midst of evil men (in medio malorum) that God made his secrets known to the apostle.109 John Bale’s The Image of Bothe Churches (1540s), influenced by Lambert’s commentary, was the first Apocalypse commentary to be written in English. It was composed during the latter years of Henry VIII’s reign, while Bale was in exile in Flanders, where he fled when his patron Thomas Cromwell fell from favour. Unsurprisingly, therefore, Bale felt a particular affinity with the exile of Patmos.110 In Bale’s paraphrase of Rev. 1:9, John is the Lord’s ‘pore persecuted seruant’ who was ‘exiled for y gospel preaching, & made a vile abiect for testifying the name & worde of the sayd Jesus Christ the only sauer of the worlde’.111 What is more unexpected is the direct correlation Bale sets up between the Roman imperial persecutors of John and the Roman papal persecutors of early Protestants. Apparently referring to the story of John’s expulsion from Rome after the oil incident by the Latin Gate, Bale turns John’s 1st-century pagan accusers into Roman Catholic opponents: Unto sainct John the Euãgelist were these misteryes of the whole trinite reueled (as I shewed afore) suche time as he was of the Emprour Domicianus expelled for his preaching into the yle of pathmos at the cruell cõplayntes of the Idolatrouse priestes & bishops, & of hym to write & sent out of the same exile into the cõgregacions.112

Augustine Marlorate’s 1561 A Catholike Exposition upon the Revelation of Sainct Iohn (English translation 1574) also highlights the strong continuity between John’s Patmos experience and that of Marlorate as a Protestant forced to flee to Geneva to escape persecution in his native France. Described by Irena Backus as ‘a sort of catena aurea of Protestant commentaries’, it treats the 107

On Lambert, see Backus 1997: 25–30. Backus 2000: 11–13. 109 Lambert 1539: 48. 110 Bauckham 1978: 63f. 111 Bale 1973, on Rev. 1:9. 112 Bale 1973, preface. Though less blatant than Bale’s reference to ‘Idolatrouse priestes & bishops’ as John’s complainants, Zwingli’s close associate Leo Jud (or Judah) also presents the seer of Patmos as an inspiration for suffering Christians: Jud 1549: fol. 1v; on Jud, see Bauckham 1978: 44f.; Backus 2000: 87–93. 108

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Apocalypse as a book of consolation, and hopes for ‘the speedy end of the reign of the popish Antichrist, which would be followed immediately by Christ’s descent for the Last Judgment’.113 In his dedication to Sir Walter Mildmay, Marlorate notes how God strengthens his people ‘by vvarning vs aforehãd vvhat things should happen to his Churche from tyme to tyme too the ende of the vvorlde, vvhat revvardes are layd vp in heauen for the godly, and vvhat punishementes shall finally fall vppon the vvicked’. The purpose of this foretelling is ‘that they mighte not be so astonished or amazed vvith the suddaynnesse or greuousnesse of them, as to quayle or shrinke at any peril, persecution, or misfortune, but alvvays comfort them selues vvith the certaintie of Gods prouidence and assurance of his helpe’.114 Commenting on Rev. 1:9, Marlorate cites Eusebius (H.E. 3.18) as testimony for John’s banishment to Patmos by Domitian. He also appeals to Orosius’s de Ormestu Mundi for the circumstances and date of Domitian’s persecution of Christians. Marlorate’s real concern, however, is didactic, in line with the stated purpose in Marlorate’s preface, illustrating the expected fate of all the godly. ‘But if this be incident to all the godly: much more shall the preachers of Gods worde and the faithfull witnesses of Christe be in daunger of persecution . . .’115 Marlorate’s contemporary David Chytraeus, close associate of Melanchthon in Wittenberg, also appeals to patristic traditions about John’s banishment (in his case Irenaeus and Eusebius) to illuminate his contemporary situation. Chytraeus’s commentary is a good example of the church-historical interpretation regularly found in early Protestant exegesis, its opening sentence explicitly affirming that ‘the Apocalypse of John is a history of the Church, from the times of Christ to the final judgement and the end of the world’ (Apocalypsis Iohannis est Historia Ecclesiastica, a temporib. Christi, vsq ad extremum iudicium & finem mundi).116 Chytraeus is keen, however, to distinguish the historical poles of 1st and 16th centuries, thus offering an interpretation of Patmos which is closer to actualization than to decoding on the Kovacs-Rowland model. John’s exile took place during the second persecution of the Church, whilst the persecutions of his own day represent a later stage in salvation-history (the whole of the Apocalypse illustrating the trials to befall the Church as set out in Matt. 24). Heinrich Bullinger represents a preacher on the Apocalypse with a particular concern for the English Protestant exiles who fled to Zurich to escape 113 114 115 116

Backus 2000: 28, 62. For a brief biography of Marlorate, see Haag 1857: VII, 256–9. Marlorate 1574: dedication. Marlorate 1574: 17a–18a. Chytraeus 1575: 1.

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Mary’s persecution. As Bauckham notes: ‘Many letters of the exile period and later convey an impression of Bullinger as in a special sense regarded as a patron of the exiles and a teacher who turned his attention specifically to the condition of the exiles.’117 Bullinger’s A Hundred Sermons upon the Apocalips of Jesu Christe, preached in Zurich in 1554 and first published in Latin in 1557 (English edition 1561), provide ‘Protestant clergy with material for sermons on the Apocalypse’.118 His particular concern for the Marian exiles is expressed in the preface to the published sermons: The preface of Henry Bullinger upō the Apocalips of Iesu Christ set forth by the Apostle and Euangelist s. Iohn, vnto all thexiles for the name of Christ in Germany and Swyserland, of Fraunce, England, Italy and of other Realmes or nations, and generally to all the faithfull where soeuer they be, abiding and lokyng for the comyng of Christe our Lorde and Iudge.119

The ambiguity in Bullinger’s preface is surely deliberate, leaving it unclear as to whether the antecedent of ‘vnto the exiles’ is Bullinger or John himself, addressing his Revelation directly to 16th-century readers. The homiletic character of Bullinger’s book enables him to establish the connection between 1st and 16th centuries as strongly as possible. This is reiterated in his Fourth Sermon, on Rev. 1:9ff. John’s self-description as ‘their partaker in affliction, or oppression and persecution’, exemplified in the boiling oil incident in Rome and his banishment to Patmos by the Emperor Domitian, seals the intimate connection between the apostle-seer and the whole Church, ‘all faythfull brethrē’. Nor is this relationship weakened by chronological distance; rather, the common experience of persecution and exile unites Christ’s disciples across the centuries. Bullinger makes this explicit in relation to the situation of his contemporary exiles: ‘And verely the persecution that vexed the Apostles, and which tormenteth us at this day, are both one.’120 James Brocard’s 1580 commentary shows Joachite influence,121 and has an interest in the apocalyptic preaching of Savonarola as well as of Luther. He interprets John’s affliction on Patmos as signifying the experience of later Christians: ‘wherein he seemeth to signify also the banishment of his brethren that should be untill the ouerthrow of Antichrist: because they ye professe

117

Bauckham 1978: 48. Backus 2000: 33 (italics in original). 119 Bullinger 1573, Preface. 120 Bullinger 1573: 13r. 121 He sets out the argument of the book thus: ‘Iohn in the Apocalyps entreateth of the state of the Church, that was in his time & that should bee diuers afterward, euen untill the renewing of the Church in ye Lords second comming: or euen untill Gods establyshed Kingdome in the thyrd state’: Brocardo 1582, fol. 5f (italics added). 118

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Christe should be persecuted by tyrans: & should be persecuted by ye Papacy, & be driuĕ to fly unto desert places, as it shalbe sayd at length in the coming of ye Lord to be lead into the captiuity of Antichrist’.122 John Foxe is an important figure for English Protestants. It is surprising that he has nothing explicit to say about Patmos in his 1587 Eicasmi seu meditationes in sacram Apocalypsim. However, in his more famous Book of Martyrs, Foxe uses the Patmos tradition and other elements of Johannine hagiography to present John as a martyr and antecedent of Protestant martyrs of the 16th century: He was distinguished as a prophet, an apostle, a divine, an evangelist, and a martyr. . . . Being at Ephesus, he was ordered by the emperor Domitian to be sent bound to Rome, where he was condemned to be cast into a caldron of boiling oil. But here a miracle was wrought in his favour; the oil did him no injury; and Domitian, not being able to put him to death, banished him to Patmos to labour in the mines, a.d. 73. He was, however, recalled by Nerva, who succeeded Domitian, but was deemed a martyr on account of his having undergone an execution, though it did not take effect.123

A later example is Thomas Pyle, minister of Lynn Regis, Norfolk in the early 18th century. In his dedication to the Bishop of Winchester, Pyle praises the latter for his role as Patron of all ‘who contribute to rescue Mankind from the Bondage of Popery’. Given his overall anti-papal exegesis, Pyle’s attributing John’s banishment to an unnamed ‘Roman Præfect’ serves to heighten the juxtaposition between imperial Rome of the 1st century and 18th-century papal Rome. He paraphrases Rev. 1:9 as ‘I, John, who am a Brother to every Christian Believer, a Fellow-Sufferer with all who now do, or shall hereafter, endure Persecution for the sake of Christ’s Religion . . . ’.124 From the Catholic side, Cornelius à Lapide’s 1627 commentary also highlights John’s role as martyr, explicitly mentioning the boiling oil episode ante portam Latinam.125 However, there does not seem to be the same impetus amongst Catholics to use the narrative of Patmos as an interpretative lens for contemporary experiences of persecution. A rare example, noted above, is Peter Bulengerus’s presentation of John as a type of those who suffer for the teaching of the Holy Roman Church.126 This paucity of such readings among Catholic exegetes may be related to the development of preterist and futurist interpretations, neither of which encourages correlation between the biblical text and the contemporary situation.

122 123 124 125 126

Brocardo 1582, fol. 27. Foxe 1839: 16. Pyle 1735: iv, 6 (italics added). Lapide 1627: 3. Bulengerus 1589: 23a.

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ACTUALIZATION OF PATMOS: MARTIN LUTHER The line between sermonic applications of John’s Patmos experience and actualizations is a fine one. In the definition provided by Judith Kovacs and Christopher Rowland, ‘actualization’ describes those interpretations of Patmos which read the Apocalypse ‘in relation to new circumstances’,127 and which particularly enable an ‘acting out’ of the Patmos experience in that new context.128 As noted already, Kovacs and Rowland propose two forms of this phenomenon: the first represents a juxtaposition of the text and its imagery with the interpreter’s own circumstances, while the second envisages a more visionary actualization, according to which the interpreter is able to ‘see again’ what John saw.129 Several of the applications of Patmos discussed in the previous section (notably Bale, Marlorate, Bullinger, and Foxe) might legitimately be categorized as actualizations of the first type. However, the most striking example of actualization from the Reformation period, containing elements of both types, is that of Martin Luther. Luther is well-known for his ambivalence towards the Apocalypse. Commentators regularly cite the negative assessment of his preface to Revelation in the 1522 September Testament (as ‘neither apostolic nor prophetic’, a book in which ‘Christ is neither taught nor known’).130 However, this did not prevent him from writing a preface to an abridged version of the Lollard commentary Opus Arduum (published in 1528 as Commentarius in Apocalypsin ante centum annos aeditus), noting approvingly that it had already interpreted the papacy as the Antichrist.131 As Irena Backus puts it: ‘The Apocalypse was indeed obscure and did not teach Christ. It could, however, teach the Antichrist, who could be and indeed had been identified with the pope in many of the radical 14th and 15th century commentaries.’132 Indeed, the very edition of Luther’s New Testament which bore his negative 1522 preface, exploited the anti-papal potential through its illustrative woodcuts by Lucas Cranach the Elder, one of which depicted Babylon wearing the papal tiara.133

127

Kovacs and Rowland 2004: 8. See the narrower definition in Rowland 2009: 299. Here he suggests that allegory/analogy might be a better description of one axis in their interpretative grid than decoding/actualization. 129 Kovacs and Rowland 2004: 9–10. 130 Luther 1960a: 398–9. This negative assessment influenced the Lutheran tradition throughout the centuries, emerging in scholarly circles in Bultmann’s assessment of Revelation as ‘a weakly Christianized Judaism’: Bultmann 1955: 175. For a more nuanced discussion of Luther’s attitude to Revelation, see Hofmann 1982. 131 Luther notes in this preface: Hanc praefationem ideo factam a nobis intelligas optime lector, ut orbi notum faceremus, nos non esse primos, qui Papatum pro Antichristi regno interpretentur: Purvey 1528, A2v. 132 Backus 2000: 7. 133 On the polemical use of the Apocalypse, see Pelikan 1984: 74–92; Scribner 1981: 170–89; on the reception of Revelation’s Babylon by Luther and his circle, see also Boxall 2001. 128

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Furthermore, Luther’s second preface to Revelation, written for the 1530 Deutsche Bibel, represents a shift in his thinking, under the influence of the historicizing interpretation of Nicholas of Lyra, as well as Wycliffite and radical Franciscan traditions.134 He treats Revelation more positively as containing true prophecy, albeit one which deals ‘exclusively with images and figures’ and therefore remains ‘a concealed and mute prophecy’ unless it receives a ‘sure interpretation’. Properly interpreted, it can profit Christian readers both for their comfort and for their warning.135 But already in the early 1520s Luther began to read his own experience through the lens of John’s, actualizing the latter in his own career. The aftermath of his trial at Worms was interpreted by him as his own Patmos, just as his performance at Worms was likened by some of his contemporaries to that of Elijah on Mount Carmel.136 Hidden by servants of Frederick the Wise at the Wartburg in the Thuringian Forest from 1521 to 1522, Luther spent his period of solitude in writing, producing a significant number of books and pamphlets,137 and translating the New Testament into German. The very context in which his first, rather negative, preface to Revelation was composed, was interpreted by Luther through the lens of that book. He sent letters to his friends ‘From the Isle of Patmos’, setting up a typological relationship between his own enforced exile in the Wartburg and that of John.138 Furthermore, there are indications that ‘Patmos’ functioned as something more than an ‘interpretative lens’, such that his actualizing contained aspects of Kovacs’s and Rowland’s second type. If Luther did not quite ‘see again’ what John saw on his Patmos, he writes as though the time spent in his WartburgPatmos enabled him to ‘do again’ what John once did (see Rev. 1:11, 19). In his dedication of a tract to Franz von Sickingen on 1st June 1521, Luther wrote: ‘In order to demonstrate that I am not idle in this wilderness and in my Patmos, I, too, have written a Revelation for myself and will share it with all who desire it.’139 The ‘Revelation’ in question was his tract On Confession, Whether the Pope Has the Power to Require It.140 Similar sentiments are expressed in his tract ‘Against Latomus’, written from the Wartburg in June 1521, in response to a book condemning his views by a theologian of Louvain, Jacobus Masson, also known as Latomus.141 Luther broke off his translation of the Bible to respond. His opening letter, to Justus Jonas, dean of the clergy in Wittenberg, offers the following explanation:

134 136 138 140

135 See Krey 2002: 135–45. Luther 1960b: 399–411. 137 On the latter, see Klaassen 1992: 80. Marius 1975: 161. 139 Bainton 1950: 193. Luther, ed. Krodel 1963: 246. 141 Brecht 1990: 18–21. Brecht 1990: 7–9.

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Truly it won’t be easy for you to believe how unwillingly I have torn myself away from the peace-giving words of Christ, with which I have been occupied on this my Patmos, in order to waste my time reading the nonsense of this prickly and thorny sophist.142

Luther may be exploiting the verbal similarity between ‘Patmos’ (or ‘Patmus’) and ‘Latomus’. He apparently sees his translation of the New Testament in the Wartburg—‘the peace-giving words of Christ’—as analogous to John’s writing, perhaps of the Gospel, on Patmos. The possibility of endowing Luther with Johannine characteristics is certainly attested elsewhere, in contemporary pictorial depictions of Luther as John the Evangelist.143 Luther concludes his letter to Justus Jonas with the phrase ‘In the place of my exile, 8 June 1521’.144 A similar phrase rounds off the book, again addressed to Jonas: ‘Greetings from my Patmos. 20 June 1521.’145 It is found again in a letter to Georg Spalatin of 10 June, written under the pseudonym of ‘Henry Nesicus’: ‘From the Isle of Patmos.’146 This actualization on Luther’s part is occasionally commented on by later interpreters. It is alluded to by Johann Winckelmann in his 1601 Commentarius in Apocalypsin, which describes Luther, like John, writing letters to address the contemporary situation of the churches ‘in his ‘Patmos’ or ‘wilderness’ (in suo pathmo seu eremo).147 Other commentators follow Luther in articulating contemporary ‘Patmos’ experiences. Hugh Broughton, for example, in his commentary on Rev. 16 identifies the king of the locusts with the Pope, who obscures the sun of justice, and enables the Patmos-Rome contrast to inform his contemporary situation. ‘Thus men’, he notes, ‘Gods messengers, shall give the Pope measure for measure: that he cannot repent: not knowing how far Patmos passeth Rome.’148 A Scottish example of actualization concerns the Bass Rock, an island-rock in the Firth of Forth, known as the ‘Scottish Patmos’. The Bass Rock was used in the late 17th century as a prison, where many ‘pious and peaceable Presbyterians’ were imprisoned. One such prisoner was John Blackadder, who died on the rock in 1686 after five years of imprisonment. The inscription on his tombstone, in the graveyard of North Berwick, not only juxtaposes the Bass Rock with Patmos but exploits the fact that Blackadder shared with the seer of Patmos the name ‘John’:

142

Luther 2007: 78. Mullett 2004: 133. 144 Luther 2007: 80. 145 Luther 2007: 200. 146 Luther, ed. Krodel 1963: 256. 147 Winckelmann 1601: 41–2. Some of Luther’s Wartburg letters were written ‘from my wilderness.’ 148 Broughton 1610: 30. 143

160

Patmos in the Reception History of the Apocalypse Blest John for Jesus’ sake in Patmos bound, His prison Bethel, Patmos Pisgah found; So the blessed John, on yonder rock confined,— His body suffered—but no chains could bind His heaven-aspiring soul; while day by day, As from Mount Pisgah’s top he did survey The promised land, and viewed the Crown by faith Laid up for those who faithful are till death. . . .149

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NAME ‘ PA TM OS ’ Although the medieval interpretation of Patmos as fretum is rare in the modern period, there are other attempts to explore the significance of the island’s name. Several of these are etymological in origin, doubtless reflecting the greater desire to root interpretation in the literal and grammatical sense of the text. In his 1596 Apocalypse commentary, the Swiss Calvinist Benedict Aretius proposes an etymological connection between Patmos and the Greek verb  E, ‘to tread’, ‘trample on’, or ‘assail’, which he combines with the medieval association of Patmos with solitudo: Furthermore,   & signifies ‘treading underfoot’ [conculcationem] from the verb  E. Hence  & 150 is a path well worn away [via bene attrita]; therefore the Apostle was in both fact and name in a difficult and rough exile [in exilio difficili & aspero].151

His proposed derivation of the name closely fits the harsh circumstances of John’s exile for the sake of the gospel: his well-worn path, the ‘trampling’ he received from his persecutors, was appropriately on an island called ‘trampled’ or ‘trodden’. Perhaps Aretius is influenced by the widespread image of the island as a harsh, barren, and rocky place.152 As well as knowing the contemporary name of ‘Palmosa’, Augustine Marlorate makes a play on the symbolic significance of Patmos in his 1561 commentary: I was in the Ile which is called Pathmos. The circumstance of the place maketh not a little to the auouchment of the truth. Pathmos signifyeth as much as deadly or deathfull. It is a little Ile in the Aegean Sea, whereinto it is reported that John

149

Porteous 1881: 37, 69. ‘A trodden way’ or ‘path’. 151 Latin text in Aretius 1596: 556. 152 There is an interesting parallel in the view expressed by some historians that the name derives from the Greek Æ Æ or ‘step’, interpreted as the ‘stepping stone’ of the god Poseidon: e.g. Stanley 1863: 226. 150

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the Apostle was banished by the Emperoure Domitian, and wrate the Apocalips there.153

‘Deadly’ or ‘deathfull’ would appear to be more than a comment on the imagined harsh circumstances of the island. In his interpretation of the seven churches, Marlorate can draw upon the kind of symbolic interpretation of place-names known to medieval commentators: he notes, for example, that Pergamum ‘signifyeth highnesse or haultinesse’.154 In the case of Patmos, it would appear that his starting-point is etymological rather than allegorical, drawing on the same Greek pun as found in Christodoulos of Patmos: Patmos =   & (‘fate’, ‘doom’, or ‘death’).155 The same etymological interpretation, understood as a symbol of the Church, is found in the 1850 commentary of John Hooper (who identifies himself simply as ‘A Clergyman’): The word ‘Patmos’ signifies mortal, or an oppressed condition, and very aptly represents the state in which the Church is placed, when she is bearing witness to the truth, and waiting for the coming and kingdom of the LORD.156

One ingenious solution to the meaning of ‘Patmos’ is found in the commentary of the French Jesuit Jean Hardouin (1646–1729), published posthumously in 1741. Hardouin’s interpretation is rather unconventional, interpreting the seven messages of Rev. 2–3 as addressed not to the literal ‘seven churches of Asia’ but allegorically to Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. He treats the names in the Apocalypse as aenigmatica nomina (e.g. terra = Judaea; Antipas = James brother of John; Jerusalem is symbolized by a large number of names, including Babylon, Sea, Armageddon, as well as the seven churches). In Hardouin’s schema, ‘Patmos’ is code for Judaea. He appeals to Isa. 20:6, where he reads the Vulgate’s insula as a reference to Judaea: Therefore the Apostle called Judaea ‘the island of Patmos’, in prophetic style [stilo prophetico]. For Isaiah calls a certain island ‘Judaea’ (Isa. 20:6): ‘And an inhabitant of this island will say on that day’, i.e. of Judaea. Therefore he calls it an ‘island’, because it was beaten on all sides, as an island is beaten by the waves [ut insula fluctibus], by the wars of neighbouring nations, which were inclined to the worship of profane deities, especially the Assyrians and Egyptians. Thus, in return, John himself calls Judaea ‘an island’ (Rev. 16:20).157

This is no arbitrary allegorical interpretation, however, but has an etymological basis. Examining possible Hebraic roots for the name of the island, he 153

Marlorate 1574: 17a. Marlorate 1574: 19b. 155 On Christodoulos’s interpretation, see section on Patmos as monastic ideal in Chapter 5. 156 Hooper 1850: 64. 157 Latin text in Hardouin 1741: 739. A close modern parallel is the allegorical reading of the Apocalypse by Barbara Thiering: Thiering 1996. 154

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offers the ingenious proposal that Patmos is a derivation of two Hebrew words, ‫‘( ֶפּה‬face’) and ‫‘( ָטֵמא‬unclean’). Patmos means ‘unclean face’, which describes the character of the people of Judah. Again, Isaiah is the key, this time the Temple vision of Isa. 6, which closely echoes John’s Patmos experience. In verse 5 ֹIsaiah describes himself as living in the midst of a people of unclean lips (‫שב‬ ֵֹ‫שָֹפַתִים ָאֹנִכי יֹו‬ ְ ‫ ;)וְּבת וֹ ְך ַעם־ְטֵמא‬i.e. in the midst of a Patmos. John, consequently, writes to the Jerusalemites (described in code as ‘the seven churches of Asia’) from Judaea (‘unclean face’, called allegorically ‘Patmos’). He takes seriously the invitation of the text (Rev. 11:8) to interpret place names ‘spiritually’ or ‘prophetically’. Hardouin engages etymology in order to justify allegorical interpretations. Another etymological interpretation understands the name Patmos as a more straightforward derivation from the island’s ancient environment (and akin to the Venetians’ name of Patmos as ‘Palmosa’). Several commentators refer to the proposal made by Samuel Bochart in his Geographia sacra that the name derives from the word for ‘terebinth’, suggesting that this tree must have populated the island in ancient times. It is a theory known to Anthonius Grellotus, J. van den Honert, and John Snodgrass.158 Honert cites Bochart’s findings: the word for terebinth in Arabic, for example, is ‫בטמוס‬, Batmos, in Syriac ‫בטמא‬, Batmo, in Chaldean ‫בוטמא‬, Butma. This is combined with evidence from Dioscorides and Isidore, both of whom attest to the presence of terebinths in the Cyclades, the island group to which Honert assigns Patmos.159

PATMOS AND THE POETS Outside the genres of commentary, homily, and lecture, the image of Patmos holds particular fascination for poets, and here we find some of its most imaginative interpreters. Most famous is Hölderlin’s 1803 hymn ‘Patmos’. However, the potential of the island is also explored in Robert Browning’s ‘A Death in the Desert’, and Victorian England spawned a significant number of lesser-known poems with Patmos as their subject.

Hölderlin’s ‘Patmos’ Friedrich Hölderlin’s ‘Patmos’ was completed in January 1803 ‘amid the ruins of his personal life’ following the death of his lover Susette Gontard, and 158 159

Grellotus 1675: 9–10; Honert 1736; Snodgrass 1799: 90. Honert 1736: 86.

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dedicated to the Landgraf of Homburg.160 It is a difficult and complex poem, and space does not permit a detailed exploration of these complexities. The main theme of ‘Patmos’, according to David Constantine, is ‘absence and separation, the longing for the recovery of fulfilled life, and how one should live in the meantime’.161 Although there are regular allusions to the story of Christ, this main theme recurs throughout the poem, exemplified in the character of John himself, who has himself experienced separation and loss, and who must rely on visionary apprehension to reconstruct the memory of that from which he is now distanced. The poem begins with an imaginary journey, in which the poet is taken by a spirit from his shadowy homeland to the dazzling landscape of Asia. From there he begins his return westwards, travelling via the islands: Und da ich hörte Der nahegelegenen eine Sei Patmos, Verlangte mich ſehr, Dort einzukehren und dort Der dunkeln Grotte zu nahn. And when I heard That one lying near Was Patmos It made me long To put in there And approach the dark cave there.162

Hölderlin knows the tradition of John’s apocalyptic cave, associated by this stage both with the Gospel and the Apocalypse. However, the contrast between the dazzling brightness of visionary Asia and the darkness of the Patmos cave also symbolizes the desire for ‘fulfilled life’ (Asia or Ionia) and that closer to the reality of 19th-century Europeans (Patmos).163 Patmos is splendid (‘Wohnt herrlich Patmos’) not like Cyprus, but rather like the hospitality of ‘a poorer house’, offering welcome to the shipwrecked or to a stranger crying for home or for a ‘departed friend’: . . . So pflegte Sie einſt des gottgeliebten, Des Sehers, der in ſeeliger Jugend war Gegangen mit

160 Constantine 1988: 258. However, he continued to work intensively on new versions of the poem after its publication in 1808: Constantine 1988: 265. 161 Constantine 1988: 258. 162 Hölderlin, ed. F. Zinkernagel, 1922: 356–7; English translation from Hölderlin 1990: 40 (used with permission). 163 Constantine 1988: 259.

164

Patmos in the Reception History of the Apocalypse Dem Sohne des Höchſten, . . . . . . So once She cared for God’s Beloved seer who was blessed in his youth With the company of The son of the Highest . . .164

It is from Patmos that this intimate friendship, and the events of Christ’s life and death are recalled. But they are done so with a sense of distance. For Hölderlin, although Patmos is a location in the story of John, and a place the poet himself can visit in his imaginary journey, it functions as ‘a Hesperian place set like a pointer towards our times among the glamorous localities of pagan Greece’.165 It is a Greek island, although closer to ‘Asia’ which for Hölderlin is the home of the pagan gods. David Constantine highlights Hölderlin’s concern to relate Patmos to islands in classical mythology (such as Cos which received the shipwrecked Peleus, and Lemnos where Achilles’ friend Patroclus was marooned), thereby according the exiled and shipwrecked John the status of Greek hero.166 Yet, through its Christian associations, it also connects to ‘St John’s intense memory of his encounters with Christ in Jerusalem’,167 and to the more shadowy reality of the contemporary western world to which the poet belongs: ‘something more like the darkness of home’.168 Hölderlin’s poem is, in Elinor Shaffer’s words, ‘perhaps his most successful strategem in his struggle to harmonize his obsession with the forms of Greek divinity with his returning Christianity’.169

Browning’s ‘A Death in the Desert’ Robert Browning’s ‘A Death in the Desert’, published in his Dramatis Personae of 1864, represents a sophisticated response to the higher criticism, especially the Jesus Lives of Strauss and Renan.170 Browning has created a multi-layered fictional document describing the death of the apostle John: a prologue (ll. 1–12) written on the outside of the parchment by the unnamed Christian owner of the manuscript; an account of John’s death attributed to Pamphylax of 164 Hölderlin, ed. F. Zinkernagel, 1922: 357; Hölderlin 1990: 40–1. The verb wohnt presents Patmos as a living being, like the stream-god in Hölderlin’s ‘Ister’: Shaffer 1975: 169. 165 Constantine 1988: 259. 166 Constantine 1971: 107–8. On Greece as an ideal land in Hölderlin, and his concern to relate Greece to Germany, see Constantine 1971: 57–67, 78–87. 167 Shaffer 1975: 145. 168 Constantine 1971: 139. 169 Shaffer 1975: 164. 170 Raymond 1950: 19–51; Shaffer 1975: 191–224; Culpepper 1993: 54–5.

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Antioch (ll. 13ff.), including a gloss by Pamphylax on 1 John 5:8 (ll. 82–104), and the final discourse of John himself; an epilogue whose author is not named (ll. 665–687); a codicile ascribed to Cerinthus.171 Patmos is mentioned twice in Browning’s poem (as well as a possible allusion to what transpired on the island in ll. 119–120: ‘What if the truth broke on me from above | As once and oft-times?’). In John’s long speech, the apostle looks back on his life’s work as the only surviving witness among the twelve, reviewing in order the Apocalypse, the Epistles, and finally the Gospel. When he reminisces about his time on Patmos, he contrasts it with his previous ministry where he was bidden to teach: Since I, whom Christ’s mouth taught, was bidden teach, I went, for many years, about the world, Saying, ‘It was so; so I heard and saw.’ Speaking as the case asked: and men believed. Afterward came the message to myself In Patmos isle; I was not bidden teach, But simply listen, take a book and write, Nor set down other than the given Word, With nothing left to my arbitrament To choose or change: I wrote, and men believed.172

On Patmos, John ceases to be the teacher, at least temporarily, and becomes the disciple. Indeed, there is a contrast between the reception accorded to his Apocalypse and his Gospel, which confirms Culpepper’s suggestion that inspiration takes precedence over memory and eye-witness testimony in this poem.173 Whilst the reaction to the divinely dictated Revelation is automatic (‘I wrote, and men believed’), the effect of the Gospel is more hesitant (‘And, in the main, I think such men believed’, l. 182). The second reference is a simile supposedly derived from his memory of the Patmos years, adopted by John to describe his own physical weakness at the time he wrote the Johannine epistles. It conjures up images of the seer, not in a cave, but contemplating by the seashore (ll. 152–156): But at the last, why, I seemed left alive Like a sea-jelly weak on Patmos strand, To tell dry sea-beach gazers how I fared When there was mid-sea, and the mighty things; Left to repeat, ‘I saw, I heard, I knew.’

The mid-sea from which the jelly fish emerges is a metaphor for the ‘mighty things’ of earlier times, which John is destined to impart. 171 172 173

Pope 1897; Culpepper 1993. Pope 1897: 8. Culpepper 1993: 61.

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Patmos in Other Victorian Poets John’s exile on Patmos is a popular topic for a number of other 19th-century British poets. William Lisle Bowles, in a lengthy poem published in 1832, takes as his starting-point ‘the tradition that the criminals in the dreary Island of Patmos were converted to Christianity by the banished Evangelist’.174 The resulting poem describes four days in the life of John on Patmos coinciding with the death of Domitian, in which he interacts with other inhabitants (the Prefect of the Roman Guard, a converted robber from Mount Carmel, a Grecian girl, a dying freeman, and the elders of Ephesus, the latter coming to invite him to return to their city), receives apocalyptic visions, and visits the high vantage-points of the island in the company of an angelic stranger (an imaginative elaboration of the ascent to a ‘very high mountain’ at Rev. 21:10, interpreted as the Patmos mountain known as ‘Prophet Elijah’). The content of the poem is similar to later imaginative novels (such as H. C. McCook’s Prisca of Patmos and Niall Williams’s John),175 and the film Apocalypsis: Revelation (2002), directed by Rafaelle Mertes. Bowles draws together a number of strands from disparate traditions in order to imagine his Patmos: claims of its rugged and unflattering character (although it is hardly deserted, given the presence of other inhabitants including a Roman garrison); threats from pirates (for which there is particular evidence in the Byzantine period); the presence of the cave, derived ultimately from the Prochorus Acts; John’s presence there towards the end of his life, ‘bent with the full weight of ninety years and upwards’ (in contrast to Browning’s John, who looks back to Patmos across the years): TWAS in the rugged and forsaken isle Of Patmos, dreariest of the sister isles Which strew th’ Ægean—where the pirate, wont To rove the seas with scymiter of blood, Now scowl’d in sullen exile—an old man, Tranquilly listening to the ocean-sounds, And resting on his staff, beside a cave . . .176

The imaginative interweaving of scenes from the Apocalypse itself (whose glorious nature contrasts ‘like a summer dream’ with the ‘dreary isle | And melancholy caves’ of Patmos) with a reconstruction of life on Patmos, and the influence of the topography on both seer and fellow inhabitants, enables a connection to be made between John and the world beyond Patmos. From the lofty vantage-point of the island’s Mount Prophet Elijah, his angelic

174 175 176

Bowles 1832: viii. McCook 1911; Williams 2009. Bowles 1832: 1.

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companion enables John to see, not only physically as far as Apollo’s Delos, but prophetically, beyond Greece and across time: ‘on sev’n hills, I see a city, crown’d | With glitt’ring domes’, which will hold dominion not ‘by their glitt’ring legions, but the pow’r | Of cowled Superstition’, until ‘A brighter Angel, from the heav’n of heav’ns, . . . Shall open the Lamb’s book again’ (a clear allusion to the Reformation, connecting this imaginative poem with the anti-papal readings of Bowles’s predecessors). Beyond this, Bowles’s England comes into John’s visionary view: ‘an island; with its chalky cliffs’, to which the ‘radiance of the Gospel shall go forth’.177 A series of poems competing for the 1863 Oxford ‘Prize Poem on a Sacred Subject’ tackle the subject in different ways.178 Charles John Abbey offers ‘An Attempt to Realize the Conditions of Feeling and Circumstance under which St. John Wrote his Vision’.179 Abbey goes in search of ‘a confine ground’ where the soul might see ‘dim visions of a greater world | Through a glass darkly’, as did the prophets of old. Considering the possibility that this path might still be open to seekers like himself, he appeals to one of its greatest exemplars, John of Patmos, who saw ‘wondrous visions’ in his old age, despite the physical constraints of the island’s boundaries: But thou, Apostle-prophet! for Truth’s sake An aged exile on thy sea-pent strand— What wondrous visions that nor eye had seen, Nor ear had heard, nor tongue of man can tell, In long-drawn pomp of deeds celestial Swept through the awe-struck silence of thy brain?

Abbey imagines Patmos as the place where John remembers the Lord’s ministry, passion and death, a remembering precipitated by sunset bringing to an end ‘the long, drear labour of the mines’: And the fresh breeze, fragrant from jasmine groves, Fell cool upon the purple Patmos heights, And wakened every pulse of memory . . .180

It is this recollection of what went before which opens the way to John’s mystic trance, paralleling the inspiration of Ezekiel, Balaam, and Jacob. But Abbey is concerned as much for inspiration in the present, for which John’s Patmos vision serves as one paradigm, along with those of musicians and artists:

177

Bowles 1832: 125–9. John on Patmos was also the subject of the 1910 Seatonian Prize in the University of Cambridge: Currey 1911; see also Woodward 1911. 179 Abbey 1863. 180 Abbey 1863: 2. 178

168

Patmos in the Reception History of the Apocalypse For, as a Handel in his inmost soul Catches faint echoes of such melodies As pass all cunning of the minstrel hand, And sighs to think that they must die away: Or as we gaze upon the master-piece Of e’en a Raphaël, and the restless mind, Amid its transport, is not satisfied, Thirsting to see the true ideal type In the great Painter’s own imagining— And, for the canvas is so wondrous fair, It opens glimpses of some higher life, Some hidden sphere of perfect harmonies: So are the half-told mysteries of the page Penned by that beloved Disciple, so profound, So veiling thoughts more than the mind conceives, And the deep, secret things of Providence, In glorious symbols, parables sublime . . .181

Other 1863 poems offer a different perspective. William Eaton Rusher, ‘an MA of Magdalen Hall’, addresses Patmos in the second person singular as both ‘Isle of the East!’ and ‘Isle of Mourning!’, now crumbling with ‘broken columns’ and ‘sculptured figures on their time-worn stone’, but which once was privileged to see, along with John, ‘the heavens, flushed with crimson dye, | Part and reveal their awful mystery’. This privilege shared by the island and its exile-seer is juxtaposed, as in earlier commentators, with the unpromising, drab character of the prison-island in Rusher’s imagination: ISLE of the East! upon whose dreary shore A sainted Exile prophesied of yore: Isle of the East! upon whose groaning sod The tyrant’s victim and the felon trod . . .182

This is underscored by the equally unpromising location for the vision on the Lord’s day: ‘Some quiet glen or beach remote he sought, | Alone, unseen and lost in holy thought.’183 In his 1863 Prize Poem, R. W. Dixon, of Pembroke College and Master of Carlisle Grammar School, follows the tradition of John as an elderly exile feeling keenly his separation from the seven churches across the water: In present darkness and distress arose That Revelation; far was he from those

181 183

Abbey 1863: 8. Rusher 1863: 6.

182

Rusher 1863: 3.

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Whom he had loved and guided and sustained, An aged, banished man; ah! what remained Save loneliness and pain in Patmos’ isle?184

The vision granted to the exile John in this dark period of tribulation, with knowledge of Antipas’s martyrdom in Pergamum (see Rev. 2:13), has Old Testament antecedents: ‘Two I remember, who in heavenly dreams | were most like John; and exiles both were they.’185 In his 1887 sonnet ‘St. John at Patmos’, William Alexander, Bishop of Derry and Raphoe, takes seriously the location of Patmos at the intersection of two symbolic worlds, Athens and Jerusalem. He asks of John: WHAT be his dreams in Patmos? O’er the seas Looks he toward Athens, where the very fall Of Grecian sunlight is Platonical?186

John’s thoughts, however, are not Athens-ward, any more than he thinks of Delos with its Apollo connection, or Naxos and its associations with Dionysus. Instead, the Galilean exile dreams of Gennesareth, with his fellow fishermen in their boats, as ‘the sun goeth down on Jezreel’. This prepares John for the coming of the Master to Patmos in John’s ‘deep meditative eye’, in a climax which exemplifies Alexander’s capacity to see natural phenomena as revelatory, ‘full of spiritual significance to the poet’s mind’: And as a man, all night Lull’d in a room full fronting ocean’s might, First waking sees a whiteness on his pane, A little dawning whiteness, then again A little line insufferably bright Edging the ripples, orbing on outright Until the glory he may scarce sustain; And as a mighty city far-off kenn’d Although the same, from each new height and glen Looks strangely different to the merchantmen, Who in long files towards its ramparts wend; So to St. John’s deep meditative eye, That Nature grew to God’s own majesty.187

Finally, Christina Rossetti includes a poetic meditation in her 1892 devotional commentary The Face of the Deep (commenting on Rev. 1:10: ‘I was in the

184

Dixon 1863: 6. Ezekiel (‘He who by Chebar saw the wheels sublime’) and Daniel (‘Who by the river’s brink beheld the throne | Of judgment set’): Dixon 1863: 9. 186 Miles (ed.) 1907: 67. 187 Miles (ed.) 1907: 59, 68. 185

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Spirit on the Lord’s day’).188 She places Rome and Patmos at two poles: Rome with ‘power of life and death, chains and sentence of banishment’ at one end, and John on Patmos at the other, offering a symbolic reading of the latter which echoes some medieval interpretations: ‘Immovable as Patmos the rock amid buffeting winds and waves, St. John stood fast in the liberty wherewith Christ had made him free.’ Her poetic address to John continues this allegory of Patmos as the rock, with implications also for herself: O St. John, with chains for thy wages, Strong thy rock where the storm-blast rages, Rock of refuge, the Rock of Ages. Rome hath passed with her awful voice, Earth is passing with all her joys, Heaven shall pass away with a noise. So from us all follies that please us, So from us all falsehoods that ease us,— Only all saints abide with their Jesus.189

PATMOS IN POST-1900 HISTORICAL-CRITICAL COMMENTARIES Finally, we turn to the interpretations of Patmos in modern critical commentaries. These have deliberately been left until last (although alluded to at various points), in proper chronological sequence, for two reasons. First, locating them in a broader historical narrative serves to highlight their relatively limited scope, and decidedly lacklustre character. A second motivation for leaving these until last is to reveal their dependence upon certain strands in the earlier reception history, and their significant neglect of other interpretative possibilities explored by their predecessors. As an exception which proves the rule about limited scope, we begin with a reading of Rev. 1:9 which is atypical among post-1900 commentators for its close attention to Patmos, that of Heinrich Kraft in his 1974 commentary. Having dismissed both the dominant view that John was banished to Patmos by Roman authorities, and the alternative proposal that the seer took himself there for missionary purposes, Kraft lists a series of canonical and noncanonical texts in which specific locations are sought out for visionary experience. 188 On Rossetti’s use of the devotional genre to overcome limitations on female engagement in exegesis, see Carruthers 2009. 189 Rossetti 1892: 26–7. James Montgomery takes up Rossetti’s proposal that the seer of Patmos is himself a poet: Montgomery 1926.

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Among these are Paul’s sojourn in Arabia in the context of a ‘revelation of Jesus Christ’ (Gal. 1:12, 16), the withdrawal of the Jerusalem community to Pella (Eusebius, H.E. 3.5.3), Ezra’s withdrawal to the field of Ardab or Ardat (4 Ezra 9:26), the field as place of revelation in the Shepherd of Hermas (Hermas, Vis. 3.1), Christ’s temptation in the wilderness (Mark 1:12–13 and parallels, with a ‘very high mountain’ [Zæ  "łÅºe ºÆ] featuring in Matthew’s version), and the Montanists and desert fathers withdrawing to mountains and deserts to receive revelation.190 At the end of this lengthy discussion, Kraft concludes: ‘It thus follows: John was on Patmos to receive a revelation.’191 The parallels adduced, he argues, would predispose early readers of the Apocalypse to understand that John sought out Patmos for the purpose of revelatory experience.192 Citing the later tradition of John’s Apocalypse cave, he draws a further connection between John’s revelation on Patmos and the revelatory events in the stories of Moses and Elijah (Exod. 33:22; 1 Kgs 19:9).193 Kraft is rare among modern critical commentators (though, as this monograph has shown, closer to many ‘pre-critical’ interpreters), both in his preference for the visionary interpretation of Patmos and in the amount of space he devotes to discussing its significance for the interpretation of Revelation. For the most part, other modern scholars focus attention on the social setting of the first recipients of John’s book, the seven congregations of Asia (Rev. 1:4), with Patmos receiving little more than a passing mention.194 Outside the commentary genre, classic monographs by Sir William Ramsay and Colin Hemer both devote a chapter each to John’s sojourn on Patmos, although their primary focus remains on the seven churches.195 Ramsay’s chapter, entitled ‘The Education of St John in Patmos’, is largely concerned with the nature of John’s punishment (banishment [deportatio] or hard labour).196 Hemer’s discussion, though more wide-ranging, and including a

190 Kraft 1974: 40–2. Kraft also plays with possible etymological connections between Arabia, Araba (= desert), Pella in Peraea (= Abara), Ezra’s field of Ardab (Arbad or Arab), and the Ardabau of the Montanists. 191 ‘Daraus folgt: Johannes befand sich zum Offenbarungsempfang in Patmos’: Kraft 1974: 42. See also Weiss 1891: 159: ‘um der göttlichen Offenbarung willen (v. 2), nämlich um sie zu empfangen, wie die Engelbotschaft (v. 1) in Aussicht gestellt.’ 192 Recent scholars who consider actual visionary experience underlying the Apocalypse, whatever the reason for John’s presence on Patmos, include Rowland 1982; Howard-Brook and Gwyther 1999: 1–45, 137–9; Boxall 2002 and 2006; Filho 2002. 193 For comparisons with Paul, Elijah, and Jesus in the wilderness, see also Vanni 1988: 120–1. 194 Patmos is hardly mentioned at all, for example, in the major commentaries of Ford 1975 and Beale 1999 (427 pages and 1157 pages respectively). 195 Ramsay 1904; Hemer 1986. 196 Ramsay 1904: 82–92.

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consideration of the island’s relationship with the province of Asia, runs to a mere seven pages, three of which are preliminary notes on Rev. 1 rather than on Patmos itself.197 A survey of post-1900 commentaries (see Appendix 1) reveals rather that the interests of the majority are largely restricted to the following questions: 1. Where is Patmos located geographically? 2. Why was John on Patmos (i.e. how are we to understand the ambiguous phrase Øa e ºª  F Ł F ŒÆd c Ææ ıæÆ
Å F)? Although less frequent, a further two related questions are also discussed in the commentaries: 3. Was Patmos a Roman penal colony or regular place of banishment? 4. What does John’s presence there reveal about his social status? This is related to discussion of the precise nature of John’s exile, given that several relevant punishments seem to have been reserved for the honestiores.198

Geographical Location Modern commentators regularly follow their early-modern predecessors in identifying Patmos as an island of the eastern Aegean, one of the Sporades (or, from a modern perspective, the Dodecanese). Many give its dimensions and its alternative name of Patino, and note approximate distances from mainland cities in Asia Minor (normally Ephesus and/or Miletus).199 Some note that Patmos was a prominent stopping-place on the sea voyage between Ephesus and Rome, thus hinting at a more prominent historical role for the island than descriptions of its isolated, desolate character suggest.200

197

Hemer 1986: 27–34. ‘It is possible that John was among the social elite, since the elite tended to be exiled for their crimes, whereas the non-elites of society were simply executed (see Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.17–20; 4.27–9)’: Witherington 2003: 9. 199 Swete 1909: 12–13; Ratton 1912: 131; Beckwith 1919: 204–5, 434; Charles 1920: I, 21–2; Allo 1921: xii; Kiddle 1940: 11; Wikenhauser 1949: 18, 30–1; Beasley-Murray 1974: 64; Mounce 1977: 33, 75; Sweet 1979: 64; Yarbro Collins 1979:11; Prigent 1981: 23–4; Boring 1989: 82; Krodel 1989: 93; Roloff 1993: 32; Aune 1997: 76–7; Barr 1998: 38–9; Murphy 1998: 2, 86; Knight 1999: 38; Koester, 2001: 52; Reddish 2001: 39; Osborne 2002: 81–2; Witherington 2003: 79; Farmer 2005: 38; Smalley 2005: 49–51; Boxall 2006: 11, 39; Resseguie 2009: 71–2; Blount 2009: 42. 200 Allo 1921: xii; Loisy 1923: 75–7. 198

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Reason for Patmos Sojourn Much of the discussion in modern commentaries revolves around the historical reason for John’s presence on Patmos. Although the phrase Øa e ºª  F Ł F ŒÆd c Ææ ıæÆ
Å F has a number of possible interpretations (see Chapter 1), the overwhelming consensus is that John was involuntarily exiled or banished to Patmos as a direct result of his preaching activity.201 There is little sympathy with the possibility that the author is being deliberately ambiguous in his choice of words. In his classic commentary, R. H. Charles provides perhaps the most influential summary of the reasons for this conclusion.202 First, notes Charles, Ø + the accusative is always used in Revelation to describe consequence (‘as a result of ’) rather than purpose (e.g. ‘for the sake of ’, which would be better expressed by the preposition ŒÆ). To illustrate this point, he references Rev. 2:3; 4:11; 6:9; 7:15; 12:11, 12; and 13:14. Second, he points to two occurrences of the phrases Øa e ºª  F Ł F and Øa c Ææ ıæÆ which are found in the context of death by persecution (Rev. 6:9; 20:4). This provides specific justification for interpreting the phrase at Rev. 1:9 similarly in terms of persecution. Charles’s third point relates to the immediate context of Rev. 1:9. The phrase accompanies John’s description of himself as ‘sharer in the tribulation . . . and endurance’, again consonant with exile or banishment to Patmos in a context of persecution. Finally, he appeals to the fact that the Fathers speak of John as an exile (his specific support comes from Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen).203 This fourth point is particularly significant for its dependence on early patristic reception history. As we saw in Chapter 2, however, the patristic evidence is in fact rather more complex, and may be influenced in no small part by attempts at actualization on the part of those experiencing Roman persecution.

201

Swete 1909: 12–13; Ratton 1912: 11–13, though see 131; Beckwith 1919: 204–5, 434; Charles 1920: I, 21–2; Allo 1921: xii; Kiddle 1940: 11; Behm 1949: 11; Wikenhauser 1949: 18, 30–1; Bonsirven 1951: 94–5; Feuillet 1963: 75; Farrer 1964: 64; Beasley-Murray 1974: 64; Mounce 1977: 33, 75; Sweet 1979: 64; Yarbro Collins 1979: 11; Prigent 1981: 23–4; Morris 1987: 52; Boring 1989: 82; Krodel 1989: 93; Schüssler Fiorenza 1991: 50; Roloff 1993: 32; Rowland 1993: 59; Richard 1995: 50; Aune 1997: 81–2; Michaels 1997: 16–17, 59–60; Murphy 1998: 15, 86; Beale 1999: 202; Koester 2001: 52; Reddish 2001: 39–40; Osborne 2002: 81–2; Witherington 2003: 9, 79; Farmer 2005: 38; Smalley 2005: 49–51; Boxall 2006: 39; Resseguie 2009: 71–2; Blount 2009: 14, 42. 202 Charles 1920: I, 21–2 (similar arguments are found in Swete 1909: 12–13). Charles is one of those commentators who cites Pliny (H.N. 4.12.23) as the authority for Patmos being a penal settlement, although Pliny says nothing of the sort in this passage. 203 Tertullian, De Praescript. 36; Clement of Alexandria, Quis dives 42; Origen, In Matt. 16.6.

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Patmos as Penal Settlement The consensus view on the meaning of the phrase Øa e ºª , etc. is regularly combined with the historical question of Roman use of Patmos for detaining exiles. Commentators as early as Beckwith identify Patmos as a designated place of banishment, or more specifically as a Roman penal settlement, often claiming support from Pliny (see Appendix 2).204 However, as George Caird noted,205 the said passage (N.H. 4.12.69) merely lists the islands of the Sporades group in the region of Patmos, and states that the island’s circumference was thirty miles. This does not rule out Patmos having been used for banishment. Classical authors name thirteen Aegean islands, including some in the vicinity of Patmos, which in Juvenal’s words were ‘rocks crowded with our noble exiles’ (Juvenal 13.246).206 However, scholarship since Caird has been more cautious in making such claims. Boring, for example, notes the lack of evidence for Patmos being a penal colony, though still believes that it was used as a place of banishment,207 while Koester appeals to Pliny (N.H. 4.69–70) and Tacitus (Ann. 4.30) for evidence that islands in the Sporades were used for banishing political prisoners (Tacitus lists Gyarus, Donusa, and Amorgos).208

John’s Social Status A related question is the light shed by John’s sentence on his social status, and the possibility that he was a Roman citizen.209 If John were exiled involuntarily to Patmos by Roman authorities, his sentence is likely to have been one of the following (either of which could be revoked on the death of the emperor):

204 Beckwith 1919: 204–5, 434; Charles 1920: I, 21–2; Allo 1921: xii; Kiddle 1940: 11; Wikenhauser 1949: 18, 30–1; Bonsirven 1951: 94–5; Farrer 1964: 64: ‘Rocky islets were largely used for purposes of detention’; Beasley-Murray 1974:64; Mounce 1977: 33, 75 (though he acknowledges that Pliny is wrongly cited in support). 205 Caird 1966: 21, n. 2. 206 For a list and references, see Balsdon 1979: 114–15. 207 Boring 1989: 82. 208 Koester 2001: 52. See also Aune 1997: 78–9; Barr 1998: 38–9; Murphy 1998: 15, 86; Knight 1999: 20–1, 38; Barker 2000: xii, 57, 79; Reddish 2001: 39 (adds Tacitus, Ann. 3.68); Smalley 2005: 49–51; Boxall 2006: 10–11, 39; Resseguie 2009: 71–2; Blount 2009: 42. Horn notes: ‘Die Insel Patmos gehörte in römischer Zeit nicht zu den Verbannungsinseln . . . ’ (Horn 2005: 158). 209 On this see Sweet 1979: 64; Yarbro Collins 1979: 11; Morris 1987: 52 (who follows the claim of Victorinus, that John was condemned to hard labour in the mines, as evidence against high social status); Aune 1997: 79–80; Murphy 1998: 86; Witherington 2003: 9; Farmer 2005: 38; Horn 2005: 150–4.

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a) Deportatio: permanent banishment to a specific location, in particular an island,210 including loss of property and civil rights, which was reserved to the emperor.211 b) Relegatio: a lesser punishment, involving either exclusion from one’s province (relegatio ab or relegatio extra), or relegation to a particular place (relegatio ad insulam), with or without a specified time limit,212 both of which could be imposed by a provincial governor. The question of John’s social class, often tied to the question of authorship, is raised by the fact that both of these punishments were largely reserved for the honestiores. There are, however, exceptions whereby these sentences are used against members of the lower classes, including groups.213

Other Interests in Commentaries A few commentators move beyond these concerns about geography, biography, and Johannine identity, to consider the wider significance of Patmos itself for interpreting Revelation. Some flesh out their comments with brief discussion of classical references to Patmos prior to John’s sojourn on the island (also Thucydides, Pel. War 3.33.3, and Strabo, Geog. 10.5.13).214 A small number also note the importance of inscriptional evidence for building up a more rounded picture of John’s Patmos, thereby challenging the view that it was a desolate and sparsely populated island.215 This evidence is considered in more detail in Appendix 2. Particularly noteworthy in this regard is David Aune, whose encyclopaedic commentary draws upon Saffrey’s article to consider the impact on Revelation of Patmos’s history, culture, and religious heritage. He notes for example, the presence of the temple to Artemis and a gymnasium, and the close relationship with Miletus.216 Other possibilities are also occasionally discussed. Kraft’s interest in parallels between Patmos and the location of John’s visionary predecessors, an interest shared by Corsini and Rowland,217 has been mentioned already. Rowland also notes the significance of Patmos becoming a Temple-like 210

Balsdon 1979: 106. Sanders 1963: 76–7; Worth 1999: 127. 212 Balsdon 1979: 104. See also Aune 1997: 78–80. 213 Worth 1999: 129–30. 214 E.g. Swete 1909: 12–13; Charles 1920: I, 21–2; Barker 2000: xii, 57, 79 (Pliny and Strabo only); Smalley 2005: 49–51. 215 Swete 1909: 12–13; Aune 1997: 77; Murphy 1998: 86; Osborne 2002: 81–2; Witherington 2003: 79; Smalley 2005: 49–51; Boxall 2006: 10–11, 39. 216 Aune 1997: 76–7; Saffrey 1975. 217 Corsini 1983: 83–4; Rowland 1993: 59. 211

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place, though far from Jerusalem, as a consequence of what John saw.218 Corsini and Richards raise the possibility that John’s visionary experience took place in a liturgical context rather than the solitary scenario often envisaged.219 One also occasionally finds tentative suggestions as to how the physical environment of Patmos might have fed John’s visionary imagination.220 Mounce, for example, writes: ‘Its rugged terrain enters the imagery of the Apocalypse in its emphasis on rocks and mountains.’221

CONCLUSIO N These exceptions to the historical-critical rule are encouraging signs that some neglected strands of the richer reception history recounted in this study have not been entirely forgotten. But they are rare exceptions, even in comparison with their immediate predecessors discussed elsewhere in this chapter. Despite the increased emphasis upon the grammatical-literal sense of the text from the Reformation onwards, the interpretations of Patmos pre-1900 are far from monochrome. They reveal a surprising variety of interpretative possibilities, albeit not as diverse as those found in the Middle Ages. Patmos still serves a symbolic function in this period as a solitary place, akin to the consecrated life of monastics, and its perceived harsh character provides much homiletic potential. Whilst biographical and geographical interest is to be expected, for many in the turbulent period of religious exile and persecution, the story of John on Patmos also serves as an interpretative lens through which later exiles might understand their own circumstances, from Martin Luther onwards. This rather more ‘engaged’ aspect to the exile tradition is, however, largely forgotten by its later critical proponents. We have also found diverse imaginative apprehensions of Patmos by the poets, including some who see in John of Patmos a paradigm for their own poetic, even visionary inspiration, and Patmos as a symbol for the situation of their own world. However, the use of the imagination has been found at work no less in modern professional biblical scholars attempting to describe John’s personal history on the island, an indication of the extent to which historical criticism depends upon significant imaginative resources in order to reconstruct the ‘world behind the text’.

218

Rowland 1998: 565, 569. Corsini 1983: 83–4; Richard 1995: 50. 220 Swete 1909: 1–213; Saffrey 1975: 393; Boxall 2006: 10–11, 39; this is also hinted at by Koester 2001: 52: ‘the island has a deeply indented coastline consisting of hills and ridges that rise from the Aegean Sea’. 221 Mounce 1977: 75. 219

7 Visual Interpretations of Patmos I N T R O D U C TI O N It is unsurprising that a biblical book as visual as Revelation should have been the object of particular interest on the part of visual artists. This is reflected in a wide range of media, including frescoes, icons, altarpieces, stained glass, sculptures and tapestries.1 The present chapter offers an (inevitably selective) exploration of how Patmos has been imagined in this rich and diverse history of visual reception. Whilst the artistic material might have been included at the relevant points in the chronological discussion hitherto, a decision has been made to handle it separately here, given the distinctive issues related to ‘visual exegesis’. In particular, this reflects an acknowledgement that the non-verbal character of the image renders it capable of conveying what cannot so easily be conveyed in commentaries or theological treatises, including the capacity to hold several ideas together in suspension.2 The treatment will combine a broad impressionistic survey of visual depictions of Patmos, organized chronologically and geographically, with more detailed study of a small number of images, representing both typical examples and particularly striking portrayals which break the mould of received interpretations. Attention will be paid to probable genealogical relationships with contemporary and earlier examples, as well as consideration of the artist’s cultural context and influences, and the specific ‘genre’ of the work (e.g. illuminated manuscript, icon, altarpiece) and its probable use. The discussion will also attend to wider hermeneutical issues: namely, the interpretative approach to the Apocalypse employed by the artist concerned, and the dynamic at work between text, artist, and viewer.

1 For discussions of this visual reception, see e.g. James 1931; van der Meer 1978; Petraglio et al. 1979; Klein 1979 and 1992; Galavaris 1989; Lewis 1993; Christe 1996; Grubb 1997; Carey (ed.) 1999; Seidel 2000; Rowland 2005; O’Hear 2011. 2 Rowland 2005: 316–19.

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VISUAL EXEGESIS The term ‘visual exegesis’ was coined by Paolo Berdini in his study of the religious art of Jacopo Bassano, to articulate his conviction that a painting visualizes not the text itself but its ‘expanded form’, the result of an active reading of the text, which combines with the biblical narrative ideas and images provided by the artist.3 This may be due to indeterminacies within the text, which invite textual expansion (of which Rev. 1:9 contains many, as has been argued in Chapter 1), but it is also an acknowledgement that the image is ‘a bearer of exegetical experience’,4 reflecting quite complex hermeneutical processes. Berdini sums it up thus: The painter reads the text and translates his scriptural reading into a problem in representation, to which he offers a solution—the image. In that image the beholder acknowledges, not the text in the abstract, but the painter’s reading of the text so that the effect the image has on the beholder is a function of what the painter wants the beholder to experience in the text. This is the trajectory of visualization, and the effect of the text through the image on the beholder is a form of exegesis. Painting is not the simple visualization of the narrative of the text but an expansion of that text, subject to discursive strategies of various kinds.5

The creative role of the artist in the act of reading the Apocalypse, and mediating a particular experience to the beholder (in Gadamerian terms, Darstellung or a ‘bringing forth’ of a particular aspect of the subject matter or Sache of the biblical text),6 is therefore the main subject of this chapter. In the case of some artists, we should allow that access to the biblical text is not direct, but mediated via other ‘texts’ (such as commentaries on Revelation, the liturgy, existing visual depictions, or popular works such as the Golden Legend). Hence, where space permits, attention will be paid to biographical data, in particular to cultural trends and political events which might have affected the artist, including the possibility that the artist has been assisted by an expert, as well as to probable artistic models and antecedents more naturally associated with art history. Examples from visual art are particularly acute reminders of a further dimension to the process of reception. Works, especially though not exclusively visual works, are ‘received’ in contexts different from the context of composition. This is what might be called the ‘geography’ and ‘form’ of the

3

Berdini 1997: 1–35; see also O’Kane 2005. Berdini 1997: 12. 5 Berdini 1997: 35. 6 As opposed to Vorstellung, mere ‘depiction’ or ‘representation’: Gadamer 1989: 110–21; O’Kane 2005: 340–5; 2010: 151–3. 4

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work: the location where the object was displayed, viewed, or venerated, and the category of the image, which determines the uses to which it was put. Panels in altarpieces, for example, would have been primarily viewed in a eucharistic context, while Mass was being celebrated at the altar in question.7 A similar liturgical function could be attributed to icons in Orthodox Christianity, particularly those forming part of the iconostasis in a church, although we should also allow for their domestic use in more personal devotion.8 Many illuminated Apocalypses and picture-books would also have had a more individual ‘geography’, in private chapels and houses, although we should not rule out communal liturgical usage for certain examples of the former. In most cases this new context of reception will have been intended by the artist; i.e. an aspect of visual exegesis. Thus consideration of ‘geography’ and ‘form’ will be integral to this chapter, alongside attention to the artists themselves and their specific contexts. Nevertheless, it must be recognized that, given the fluidity of ownership and other vicissitudes of history, the intended context of a work’s reception may not be its only one. Many of these objects are now displayed in an alien context, such as an art gallery or museum, which may provoke a quite different response to that produced by their intended setting.9

EARLY MEDIEVAL EXAMPLES Although particular motifs and scenes from the Apocalypse are well attested in early centuries (e.g. Alpha and Omega, the enthroned Lamb, the twenty-four elders, the new Jerusalem),10 it is in Apocalypse cycles proper that Patmos comes to prominence visually. Unlike the earlier motifs and scenes, which tended to adorn the walls and apse ceilings of Christian basilicas, many of these cycles exist in illuminated manuscripts, designed for liturgical use or monastic study, and, at least in the case of the 13th- and 14th-century AngloNorman Apocalypses, also private meditation amongst the wealthy laity. The earliest extant examples are from the early Carolingian period,11 although

7

See Lane 1984; also Williamson 2004. Ouspensky and Lossky 1969; Ouspensky 1992. 9 Martin O’Kane draws an analogy between visual exegesis and Wirkungsgeschichte, arguing that the former includes both how the painter ‘reads’ the text, and how the viewer interprets the resulting image: both the ‘effect’ of the biblical text and the ‘effect’ of the image which interprets that text: O’Kane 2010: 148. 10 van der Meer 1978: 23–37, 51–73; Klein 1992: 159–67; Christe 1996. 11 Klein 1979. 8

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the evidence of Bede, and analysis of, for example, the Trèves or Trier Apocalypse (Stadtbibl., cod. 31, early 9th century), points to the existence of earlier Italian models as early as the 5th or 6th centuries.12 The earliest surviving examples (derived according to Klein from the early Christian Roman prototype) pay little attention to the visual representation of Patmos. The Trier Apocalypse, for example, distinguishes the visual space of Patmos from heaven above, and a sea teaming with fish below, only by the crudest of line divisions.13 Of possible interest, however, is folio 4v, an image dominated by the Son of Man amidst the candlesticks, his right hand on John’s head. John appears again below, standing on the shore with a city or small group of buildings to the right, identified by Klein as Patmos.14 If Klein’s interpretation is correct, then Trier’s Patmos is no solitary place of banishment but a place of habitation and human community. Given the liturgical use of Trier, however, and the ecclesiastical architecture of the buildings, this may be less a statement about the historical setting of 1stcentury Patmos than the potential for ecclesial/liturgical apprehension of John’s vision for the readers of Trier in the present. By contrast even to Trier, the beautifully illustrated Bamberg Apocalypse (c.1001; Staatsbibl., Bibl. 140) makes no attempt to distinguish Patmos from the earth on which John stands.15 Nor does the island feature prominently in the lavishly illustrated Beatus manuscripts, containing the Apocalypse commentary of Beatus of Liébana,16 of which there are twenty-six extant manuscripts or fragments, dating from the last quarter of the 9th to the first half of the 13th century.17 Williams has proposed that the manuscripts were produced to aid study and contemplation, primarily in monasteries,18 and probably during Eastertide.19 Such a contemplative function would make Patmos an ideal image, given its association in the commentary tradition with solitude,

12

For genealogical groupings, see Klein 1992. Trier was probably produced in France c.800 for the liturgical reading of Revelation during Eastertide: Snyder 1964; Trier Apocalypse 1975; van der Meer 1978: 92–101. 14 Klein 1979: 145; a similar interpretation is offered in the commentary to the facsimile edition of Trier: ‘Unten auf der Insel Patmos rechts in kleinem Format eine Stadt’: Trier Apocalypse 1975: II, 117. For the image of f. 4v, see van der Meer 1978: 92; also Petraglio et al. 1979: 167. 15 Dated to the reign of Otto III: so Henry Mayr-Harting, following Schramm: Mayr-Harting 1991: 11–55, 215–28; see also van der Meer 1978: 102–7. 16 On the Beatus commentaries, see van der Meer 1978: 108–17; Williams 1994–2003. 17 Williams 1994–2003: I, 10–11. 18 Williams 1992: 225. Williams suggests that Beatus’s original commentary, by contrast, was intended as a handbook in preparation for the expected End of the world in 800. 19 There is firm evidence from seventh-century Spain for the reading of Rev. 1:9–16 and 17–18 in the liturgy for Holy Saturday, and the whole prologue and inaugural vision (Rev. 1:1–18) at Easter (in hilaria pasche ad missam): Heitz 1979: 219; Seidel 2000: 469. 13

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visionary experience, and eventually with monasticism (although Beatus’s commentary discusses only the second of these, along with the Epiphanian tradition of exile under Claudius).20 Yet Patmos is rarely depicted in the image for the relevant storia (Rev. 1:7–11) in the Beatus manuscripts.21 There are occasional exceptions: the Osma Beatus f. 70v, illustrating the vision of God enthroned from Rev. 4, has John lying prostrate on an arc shape which is called insula Pathmos. The Berlin Beatus (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, MS Theol. Lat. Fol. 561, f. 2) depicts John waking on Patmos (on the left) and then writing (on the right). There are mountains behind him with a church, and a sea encircling him with fish.22 More surprising, however, is the absence of Patmos from the mappa mundi in many of the Beatus manuscripts, designed to illustrate the dispersion of the twelve apostles (as described in the Prologue to Book II of Beatus’s commentary).23 This is especially puzzling given the inclusion of nearby islands such as Samos and Delos. Other examples from the end of the first millennium suggest that some artists invested Patmos with greater iconographical significance. The Wolfenbüttel Apocalypse (fol. 9v) depicts Patmos with a prominent tree, in front of which John sits as he records the vision of the Son of Man.24 The tree will become an important element in later artistic portrayals, and even here seems more symbolic than decorative. Anticipating images in Anglo-Norman Apocalypse manuscripts, John is depicted being woken from sleep on Patmos by an angel in the early 9th-century Carolingian Juvenianus Codex (Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana MS. B.25.2, fo. 675r), a scene closely paralleled in a capital in the cloister at Moissac in France, dated to 1100.25 In both, however, interest is less on Patmos than on the person of John, whose body covers the whole island.

ANGLO-NORMAN APOCALYPSES Patmos comes to particular prominence in the Gothic Anglo-Norman Apocalypses which emerged around the middle of the 13th century.26 These can be 20

On the use of Beatus images as meditational tools, see Carruthers 1998: 150–5. Beatus, ed. Sanders 1930: 52, 55–6. Storia is the term used for a section of the biblical text in Beatus’s commentary. 22 Williams 1994–2003: IV, fig. 365. 23 Admittedly, in several of the surviving manuscripts, the names of some of the islands are difficult to decipher: e.g. Morgan Beatus 1991: fols 33v–34. 24 Petraglio et al. 1979: 170, fig. 25. 25 Klein 1992: 171–2; images at fig. 9 and fig. 10. 26 The precise family relationships between the Anglo-Norman Apocalypses is complex, and will not be examined in detailed here: see e.g. Delisle and Meyer 1900–1901; James 1931; Henderson 1985: 118–200; Morgan 1990: 30–1; Klein 1992. 21

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subdivided into two types: the ‘Corpus-Lambeth’ group, which contain a French prose gloss on the Apocalypse (in which John is a figure of ‘le bon prelat’ who transcends worldly things),27 and the more numerous ‘Berengaudus’ type, containing excerpts from Berengaudus’s Latin commentary (further subdivided into the Metz, Morgan, Westminster, and Trinity clusters).28 Scholars are puzzled by the burgeoning of so many distinctive Apocalypses in England in the mid- to late 13th century. One explanation is the general eschatological speculation of the period, fuelled by specific events such as the invasion of Russia by the Tartars in 1237–40, and the fall of Jerusalem to the Muslims in 1244, as well as the expectation of the imminent coming of Antichrist, predicted by Matthew Paris to occur in 1250 (altered to 1260 in some manuscripts of his work).29 Another possibility is the specific influence of the Franciscans, reflected in certain of the illustrations which portray Franciscan figures on the side of the Lamb. In the Bodleian Douce Apocalypse, for example, the two witnesses of Rev. 11 are depicted wearing Franciscan habits, while the Trinity Apocalypse contains an image of a Franciscan and a noblewoman battling together against the beast of Rev. 13. However, the Anglo-Norman Apocalypses, with their widespread use of the conservative Berengaudus commentary, may be regarded as a challenge to the more radical Joachite interpretation found in some strands of Franciscanism.30 A further issue raised by this body of Apocalypse manuscripts concerns their use and impact on the reader. Unlike some earlier Apocalypse cycles which would have been read in monastic circles (and perhaps liturgically), a significant number of the Anglo-Norman Apocalypses were produced for wealthy patrons, including women, and especially members of the royal court. Their production at this period reflects a growing tendency by the second half of the 13th century for books to be studied privately rather than read aloud; that is, a shift from oral to visual modes of communication.31 Suzanne Lewis points to the crucial role here of the physical format: a typical page would contain an illustration (sometimes more than one), a few verses of the biblical text, and a short commentary. The effect of such a format would be to break up the flow of the narrative, such that the dramatic tension and anticipation inherent in the biblical text gives way to isolated contemplation of specific images or moments.32

27

Camille 1992: 279. For a Middle English version of the gloss, see Fridner (ed.) 1961. O’Hear 2011: 11–13. Morgan 2006: 11–12 treats Trinity as an isolated example, listing Eton-Lambeth instead as his fourth group. 29 Morgan 2006: 16. 30 For this view, see Freyhan 1955; O’Hear 2011: 13–14. In England, Joachite ideas had influenced the Franciscan Adam Marsh, who was consulted by Eleanor of Provence, and Bishop Robert Grosseteste, see Morgan 2005: 9; 2006: 18. 31 Lewis 1995: 3; Morgan 2005: 12. 32 Lewis 1992: 260; 1995: 12. 28

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This would include meditation upon the significance of Patmos, given its prominent location as the first image to illustrate the Apocalypse proper. Although sometimes still dwarfed by the figure of John,33 Patmos in the Gothic Apocalypses has become a more prominent element of the visual landscape than in Trier or the Beatus cycles, with carefully defined boundaries marked by a more substantial sea, the presence of trees and other floral decoration, and often a relationship with surrounding islands. Moreover, those cycles which include scenes from the life of John (more than half of the 13th-century representatives of the Berengaudus type)34 invite connectivity with his larger biography. A viewer of the 13th-century Dyson Perrins-Getty Apocalypse,35 for example, would be moved by the sense of exile and isolation evoked by the violent ejection of John from the boat which transports him from Rome to Patmos. Patmos in Dyson Perrins is an uninhabited island, devoid even of shelter or vegetation. These initial scenes from John’s vita accentuate the latter’s role as persecuted exile, a ‘martyr’ without literal martyrdom, as well as preparing the way for the Apocalypse proper, through portraying Patmos as a place of separation from John’s previous world. In some manuscripts, such as the lavishly illustrated Trinity Apocalypse (c.1252–1257),36 scenes from the vita are also provided at the end of the volume (beginning with the assassination of Domitian). Trinity was probably produced for a female aristocratic or royal patron,37 its intended lay ownership further confirmed by the fact that it contains a French translation of the Berengaudus commentary rather than the normal Latin.38 The Trinity Apocalypse presents a threefold structure whereby John’s biography is truncated by a ‘rite of passage’ which is his Patmos vision, and which he survives in order to tell the tale.39 This is underscored by several features. First, there is a kind of visual inclusio marked by the baptism of Drusiana just before John’s exile and his raising of Drusiana from the dead just after. Although we are told in the French gloss on folio 2r of Trinity that John was ‘resplendent with the grace of many miracles’ (e il resplendi de vertues 33 On the non-naturalistic style of the images, and the portrayal of Patmos in the Lambeth Apocalypse, see O’Hear 2011: 29. 34 Lewis 1992: 267. 35 J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Ludwig. III I (83.MC.72). 36 van der Meer 1978: 152–75; McKitterick (ed.) 2005; facsimile edition in Brieger 1967: II. Given their lavishness and the costs involved in production, these Anglo-Norman Apocalypses would have been ‘status symbols’ as well as objects of study and devotion: O’Hear 2011: 13. 37 Possible candidates include Eleanor of Provence, daughter of Raymond Berengar and queen to Henry III, her sister Sanchia Countess of Cornwall, and Eleanor of Castile, wife of Henry’s son, later Edward I: Brieger 1967: I, 14–15; Morgan 2005: 15f. On the literary patronage of Eleanor of Castile, see Carmi Parsons 1996: 177–86. 38 Brieger 1967: I, 5; Morgan 2005: 27–30. According to Ian Short, Anglo-Norman was the vernacular of the aristocracy and higher clergy: Short 2005: 124. 39 Freyhan invites comparison with another hero of romance, Alexander, ‘who sees fabulous monsters and unheard-of happenings’: Freyhan 1955: 225.

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de mutes miracles), his miraculous powers are now even greater in the light of his experience on Patmos. Second, John has changed physically throughout the process, as he ‘grows up’ (he is beardless when he arrives on Patmos, and remains so until folio 9, so that he can return to Ephesus having attained maturity). Suzanne Lewis has made the plausible suggestion that the experience of reading such Apocalypses would have functioned as a kind of ‘spiritual pilgrimage’ as an alternative to the physical journey to Jerusalem, now inaccessible after the fall of the holy city following the siege of 1244.40 The reader or viewer enters into the experience of John, who leaves his own world—the city of Ephesus to which he will return at the end of his vision—to enter into an alternative realm in which Jerusalem (the heavenly rather than the earthly) is his goal. In his transitional, liminal state on Patmos ‘he passes through a uniquely privileged realm or dimension and then returns to his old life in a newly defined role’.41 This notion of vicarious pilgrimage, to be interiorized by the viewer contemplating the images of a manuscript such as Trinity, parallels the popularity of the contemporary work The Travels of Sir John Mandeville.

DOUCE APOCALYPSE One image of Patmos from the Anglo-Norman Apocalypse tradition is worth exploring in more detail. The Bodleian Douce Apocalypse (Douce MS. 180) belongs to the ‘Westminster group’ of c.1255–70 (along with Dyson Perrins/ Getty; British Library Add. MS 35166; Paris BNF MS. lat. 10474).42 In its present format Douce contains two texts: twelve leaves containing a French Apocalypse with French prose commentary but no images, and an illustrated Latin version, accompanied by excerpts from Berengaudus’s commentary.43 Unlike Trinity, there is no evidence that Douce ever contained scenes from the life of John. The illustrated Latin Apocalypse in Douce certainly derives from royal circles, exhibiting the influence of the French court. Nigel Morgan makes a good case for it being produced c.1265–1270 for Prince Edward, later Edward I, and his young bride Eleanor of Castile.44 This suggests that (like the Trinity and Lambeth Apocalypses) it was designed for private devotion, although the 40

Lewis 1995: 32–4. Lewis 1995: 33. 42 Facsimile editions: James 1922 and Douce Apocalypse 1981; for commentary, see Klein 1983 and Morgan 2006. On Paris BNF MS lat. 10474, see Henderson 1970. 43 Copies of Berengaudus’s Apocalypse were found in English monastic libraries from the end of the 11th century (the earliest example is Longleat, Coll. Marquess of Bath MS. 2, from the Benedictine Abbey of Holme St Benet): Michael 1984. 44 Morgan 2006: 7–9; so also van der Meer 1978: 42. 41

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Latin of the main text might have demanded assistance from a clerical guide.45 On the other hand, Natasha O’Hear has suggested, in the light of her study of the Latin gloss from Berengaudus’s commentary in the Lambeth Apocalypse (which reveals careless composition and mistakes), that the Latin text might have been included instead to give the manuscripts gravitas, with the images taking priority in study and contemplation.46 If a chaplain did play an interpretative role in translating and commenting, then the images might have functioned for the lay owner as ‘memory aids’ on which to fix the complex ideas expounded.47 Douce’s opening image (Plate 1) is of Patmos, probably illustrating Rev. 1:1 (the sending of the angel to John).48 The biblical text below covers Rev. 1:1–3, followed by Berengaudus’s commentary on these verses, which affirms that this book is the work of ‘blessed John apostle and evangelist’. The miniature is dominated by John, disturbed from reading by the angel who stands at his right shoulder, pointing up to the blue boundary of heaven.49 This contrasts with the same scene in other Anglo-Norman Apocalypses, including some of the ‘Westminster’ group, where John is depicted asleep. Patmos, identified by the French inscription Cest le hysle de Pathmos, is marked by a tree, a feature already noted in Wolfenbüttel, and one which will become an increasingly stable part of the Western iconographical tradition (e.g. Bosch, Dürer, Burgkmair, and Velázquez). The prominence of Douce’s tree suggests more than mere decoration, perhaps representing the tree of revelation, or the tree of life in the Garden of Eden. There are visual similarities between this image and Douce’s miniature of the enthroned Lamb in the new Jerusalem (Douce MS 180, p. 94).50 The possibility that the rocky island of exile is also a garden is strengthened by the flowers and other plants growing around its edge. Further echoes of the first creation, as well as the promise of a restored Paradise with the river of life (see Rev. 22:1) may be supplied by the waters of the river-like sea surrounding Patmos on three sides, teaming with a variety of sea creatures (cf. Gen. 1:20–21). A lone boat, on which a small dog keeps guard, may be the boat which transported John to Patmos. Most interesting about Douce, however, is its attempt to locate Patmos more precisely in geographical terms, a feature which it shares with several other English Gothic Apocalypses (e.g. Paris BN MS lat. 10474, Metz, Lambeth,

45

O’Hear 2011: 24. O’Hear 2011: 21–2. 47 O’Hear 2011: 25. 48 For a description and commentary, see Klein 1983: 98–100, 185–6; see also Morgan 2006: 43. 49 The colour of John’s garments is relatively fixed in the Anglo-Norman tradition: an inner tunic of a light purple hue, and a brown or pink outer garment with a green lining. 50 For the image, see Morgan 2006: 100. 46

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Dyson Perrins-Getty, Bodleian Tanner 184, and Gulbenkian).51 The immediate context is provided by the identification of the sea with the Bosphorus (Cest la mer de Bosforum), slightly surprising if not totally wide of the mark for an island of the Aegean. But these English Apocalypses also name the islands around Patmos. In Douce, two of the three are identified. In the top righthand corner is the island of Tylis (insula Tylis), containing what appears to be a small church. A larger island in the bottom right, containing an archer hunting a rabbit or hare, is identified as Garmosia insula (Garmasia in other manuscripts). There is a third, unnamed island, with another church-like building, in the bottom left-hand corner. Metz, Lambeth (both probably earlier than Douce) and Gulbenkian identify this third island as insula Sardis. These three names are sufficiently puzzling to have defeated even the great expert on illuminated Apocalypses, Montague James,52 suggesting that the geography envisaged by these Anglo-Norman illuminators may be more mythic than literal. No known island bore the name Garmosia or Garmasia. There was a town in southern Germany of that name, situated between Bamberg and Vienna,53 but that is not an obvious choice. James proposed that it was a corruption of a name ending in - ıÆ, -usa (as in the case of Carinusa), but the reading ‘Garmusa’ or ‘Garmousa’ sheds no more light on the problem.54 The inclusion of Garmosia could be an attempt (now obscure to us) to make John’s vision contemporary. Nor is Sardis straightforward, given that Revelation’s Sardis is not an island but a mainland city of Asia, some miles inland from the coast. James’s suggestion that Sardinia is intended is implausible.55 The most obvious candidate remains the Asian city which hosted one of the seven churches (mentioned at Rev. 1:11). Perhaps the presence of Sardis is a reminder that the angelic revelation conveyed to John is intended for the seven churches, in medieval exegesis symbolic of the universal Church, and here symbolized by what looks like a church or chapel on Douce’s third island. This may account for the illustrator of Douce omitting the name, leaving an unnamed island as an indicator that contemporary Christians are as close to John’s visionary narrative as those named churches of the 1st century. More illuminating is the island named insula Tylis, located in the top righthand corner. There are two main candidates. The first is the island known in classical and medieval literature as Thile, Atilis, or ultima Thule,56 generally

51 In British Library Add. 35166, British Library Add. 17333 and Cloisters, these same islands are shown but not named. 52 ‘I have so far sought in vain for the source of three odd names’: James 1922: 18. 53 Lelewel 1852: III, 98. 54 James 1922: 18 55 James 1922: 18. 56 On Thule/Tylis, see Cassidy 1963.

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located in the northern realms beyond Britain, at the earth’s limits, or at least the boundary of the known world.57 Pliny the Elder states that it was six days’ sail north of Britain (N.H. 2.77). This location is reflected in various Beatus mappae mundi, where Tile insula is found on the northern perimeter, close to Britannia and Scotia.58 Yet the juxtaposition of Patmos to Tylis in Douce may have further significance. A passage from Seneca’s Medea raises the possibility that new lands may be discovered beyond Thule (Seneca, Medea 374–379): There will come an age in the far-off years when Ocean shall unloose the bonds of things, when the whole broad earth shall be revealed, when Tethys shall disclose new worlds and Thule not be the limit of the lands [nec sit terris ultima Thule].59

If ultima Thule is indeed intended, then John’s Patmos vision also takes place at the edge of the known earth, in that liminal place beyond John’s mundane world, and even beyond ultima Thule. A parallel might be drawn here with Enoch, who is taken on a visionary tour to the ends of the earth (1 En. 17–36). It is perhaps significant that insula Tylis is located close to the ultimate of ultimate boundaries: that between earth and heaven (although not as close as Patmos, whose boundary is penetrated by an angelic visitor). A second possibility60 identifies it with an island in the East, either Tylus in the Persian Gulf, or the Indian island of Tylos or Tilon, described by Augustine in the following paradisiacal terms: Tilon, an Indian island, has this advantage over all other lands, that no tree which grows in it ever loses its foliage (Augustine, De Civ. Dei 21.5).61

In support of this reading are the tree and flowers which decorate Patmos in Douce. Furthermore, in some medieval maps such as the Sawley Map (Durham, 12th or 13th century), tiles insula is located in the East, the closest island to the earthly Paradise. If the illuminator of Douce knew such maps, he may be identifying Patmos with the Garden of Eden, now restored through John’s apocalyptic vision (a suggestion already noted in the comparison between Douce’s Patmos and its visual depiction of the New Jerusalem).

57

In some authors it is located at the western edge of the Atlantic Ocean: Cassidy 1963: 597. E.g. Silos Beatus (London, British Library Add. MS 11695, ff. 39v–40); Beatus of Ferdinand 1st and Sanche (MS B.N. Madrid Vit. 14–2). See Beatus 1982: 90–1. 59 English translation from Cassidy 1963: 595; Latin text in Seneca, ed. Costa 1973: 36. This passage was treated as a prophecy by Christopher Columbus. 60 This is the preference of James 1922: 18: ‘Tylis for Tile (Tylos), near the mouth of the Ganges—less probably for Thule’. 61 Cited in Cassidy 1963: 598. In a spherical earth, these two islands, one to the south of Asia and one in the far north, might be brought together. 58

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This second interpretation is strengthened by the presence in Douce of excerpts from Berengaudus’s commentary. Berengaudus represents that Augustinian strand in medieval interpretation which was less focused on the Antichrist than on the more ‘utopian’ aspects of the apocalyptic mentality, particularly in the restoration of paradise.62 Patmos is then the place in the mythic geography of Douce where the promised restoration is anticipated in visionary transformation.

OTHE R L ATE ME DI E VAL E XAMP L E S Artists in other parts of late medieval Europe also attempt visualizations of Patmos, albeit as ‘a timeless surrounding for the great event’63 of John’s apocalyptic visions. An Italian example is Giotto’s 1320 fresco in the Peruzzi Chapel of St Croce in Florence, a large lunette (280  450 cm) in a chapel jointly dedicated to John the Baptist and John the Evangelist.64 John crouches on an island of bare rock (a depiction of Patmos which will capture the imagination of many interpreters in the modern period), surrounded by a turbulent sea. He is apparently asleep, as though receiving his revelation, as did his predecessor Daniel, in ‘visions of the night’. In the sky above him, to the right, is the woman pursued by the dragon of Rev. 12; on the left sits the Son of Man of Rev. 14, wielding the sickle with which He will harvest the earth. The focus for the beholder is less on Patmos itself than on the celestial battle and last judgement for which Patmos represents the privileged vantage point. A remarkably similar scene, no doubt influenced by Giotto, is found in Donatello’s painted stucco produced between 1428 and 1443 for Florence’s Church of San Lorenzo, although Donatello depicts John in the reclining posture of one receiving visions in sleep, as in the fresco by Giusto de’ Menabuoi in the baptistery at Padua.65 The influence of Giotto may also be detected in the 14th-century Naples Apocalypse cycles (now in the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart), linked to the circles of Robert of Anjou in early 14th-century Naples (c.1328–33).66 These comprise 62

Visser 1996: 2. See also Verbeke, Verhelst, and Welkenhuysen (eds) 1988. Galavaris 1989: 253. 64 For the image, see van der Meer 1978: 188–93. Other frescoes depict the raising of Drusiana, and John’s death and assumption at Ephesus. 65 Lievore (ed.) 1994. Giotto and Donatello are two examples of a ‘synchronic’ interpretation, in which several visions from the Apocalypse are presented together as overlapping, rather than chronologically sequential, events (a more famous example, from Northern Europe, is Hans Memling’s St John on Patmos in his Bruges altarpiece of 1479). On this see Rowland 2005: 307–8. 66 Robert was a supporter of the Franciscan Spirituals, especially Peter Olivi, providing sanctuary to persecuted Spirituals after 1328: Muir Wright 2004: 267–8. 63

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two panels made up of numerous small scenes described by one commentator as ‘floating in limitless space like tiny meteorites moving in silent streams through the blue void’.67 Again John sits on Patmos, seated under a palm tree, witnessing the apocalyptic events happening around him. The palm tree may betray early knowledge of the island’s alternative name of ‘Palmosa’.68 The Anglo-Norman connection with the life of John, interpreting Patmos as part of John’s ‘martyrdom’, also continues to exert influence. It is reflected in stained glass in the Cathedrals of Chartres, Laon, and Auxerre, in the West Rose Window of the St-Chapelle in Paris, and the Great East Window of York Minster (1405–1408, by John Thornton of Coventry).69 In the York window, for example, the scenes from the Apocalypse are prefaced by a depiction of John in the boiling oil, and his sea voyage to Patmos.70 In manuscript form, this biographical pattern continues in the Flemish Apocalypse (c.1400–1410), as well as in German manuscripts of the 14th and 15th centuries.71 The first of the lavishly illustrated miniatures in the Flemish Apocalypse, presenting several scenes of John’s trial in Rome, includes an image of John departing in a boat from Rome-Ostia. The Flemish architecture of the buildings narrows the gap between the story of the 1st-century apostle and that of the 15th-century Flemish viewer contemplating the images in the book. In the second, John lies recumbent, but awake, listening intently to the angel above him, while the boatman who has brought him to his exile sets sail for Ostia.72 Finally, the Anglo-Norman cycle has also influenced the depiction of Patmos in the altarpiece from the workshop of Master Bertram in Hamburg (c.1400–1410; Victoria and Albert Museum).73 Of the forty-five scenes from the Apocalypse on the front of the altarpiece, this is the only one not derived from illustrated manuscripts of Alexander Minorita’s commentary. Here John is wakened from sleep at the sound of the Lord’s voice ‘like a trumpet’, as he reclines on a small island surrounded by water and decorated by plants, in a manner reminiscent of the English Apocalypses. The same influence can be detected on the back of the left wing, which includes three compartments (running from the bottom upwards) depicting scenes of John preaching, his appearance before Domitian, the boiling oil incident, and his banishment by

67

Muir Wright 2004: 262; see O’Hear 2011: 92 on Giotto’s possible influence on Memling. For the image, see van der Meer 1978: 196. 69 Harrison 1927; van der Meer 1978: 45; 139–44; Raguin 1982: 134–5; O’Connor and Haselock 1997: 364–5; Brown 1999: 64–70. 70 Harrison 1927: 126. 71 van der Meer 1978: 202–53. 72 van der Meer 1978: 206. 73 Kauffmann 1968. The altarpiece is now incomplete (it lacks Rev. 17–22), and in its current state forms a triptych, with scenes from the lives of the Virgin, St John, St Giles, and St Mary Magdalen on the back. 68

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Domitian and activity on Patmos, including being wakened from sleep by the celestial trumpet.74 Yet both scenes of Patmos (the last of the life of John, and the first of the Apocalypse proper) contain a striking departure from the inherited AngloNorman tradition. John is depicted as preaching to a congregation on Patmos as well as hearing the Lord’s voice. The inclusion of this preaching image, which in the scene from the life of John is juxtaposed to the appearance before Domitian on the left, manages to hold together in tension the exile, visionary, and missionary interpretations of propter verbum Dei etc. which are treated in most modern commentaries as mutually exclusive. The prominent place devoted to preaching may be an indication of the altarpiece’s provenance, thought to have been commissioned by Franciscans, or possibly Dominicans.75

EASTERN ICONOGRAPHY Visual representations of scenes from the Apocalypse are less frequent in the East than the West, and appear relatively late.76 The first attested fresco was painted in 1415 by Theophanes the Greek for the Cathedral of the Annunciation in Moscow, with Apocalypse icons surviving from the 15th and 16th centuries.77 The earliest Greek example is a manuscript of 1422, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, which also contains illustrations from the Apocalypse. Nevertheless, it was not until the 16th century that full-blown Apocalypse cycles, akin to those regularly found in the West, are attested in Orthodox churches. There was increased Greek interest in the Apocalypse in the postByzantine period (i.e. from the 14th century onwards). This was partly due to acceptance of the Apocalypse’s canonical status, partly to Greek experience of oppression under Turkish overlords.78 However, the resultant apocalypse tableaux in Greek and Balkan churches had a preference for Old Testament apocalyptic texts, albeit Christianized, over Johannine details.79 The earliest cycles proper are apparently the Apocalypse frescoes in the Monastery of Dionysiou on Mount Athos, dated to 1547. These are clearly dependent upon Western prototypes, either to Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut cycle, Lucas Cranach’s illustrations for Luther’s New Testament, or the engravings of 74 Kauffmann 1968: 27, 33 and plates 1 and 6. The inscriptions on the scrolls on the first Apocalypse image have been restored and are now unintelligible. 75 Kauffmann 1968: 25. 76 Thierry 1979: 319–39. 77 Nersessian 1998. 78 Willoughby, 1940: I, 101–2. 79 Willoughby 1940: I, 101.

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the German ‘Master IF’ (variously identified as Johan Frank, Johan Furtenbach, or Jacobus Faber), although they are adapted to Orthodox iconographical conventions.80 In the first image, for example, Patmos is represented by stylized Byzantine rocks, while John is the bearded elder rather than the youthful German. Further Athos examples include the frescoes in the refectory at Dochiariu from later in the 16th century, Xenophon (c.1633–54), and the Portaitissa Chapel at the Great Laura (1719). Only the latter example, however, comes from within a monastic chapel or church, an indication of ongoing anxiety about canonicity.

John and Prochorus Yet the lateness of the Eastern Apocalypse cycle tradition did not prevent Patmos entering the iconographical tradition at a much earlier stage. It can be found as the backdrop to depictions of John, generally dictating his Gospel to Prochorus, from the 10th or early 11th century onwards.81 As noted in Chapter 5, the Eastern tradition eschews the Western image of John as a young man and solitary exile.82 Rather, the Eastern Patmos is a place of human community as well as inspired writing. Moreover, the Eastern John is an older man, as fits the dominant patristic traditions and dating. In manuscripts, the image most often functions as a frontispiece to the Fourth Gospel (an 11th-century example is Vienna, National Library, Theol. Gr. 302), one of three alternative authorship pictures depicting John as Evangelist.83 More rarely, it prefaces the text of the Apocalypse. The scene is also found in frescoes and wall-paintings: one 12th century example survives in the Cave of the Apocalypse on Patmos.84 A striking feature of this wall-painting is the stylized mountain in the background. This is almost certainly the Patmos mountain described as the location for the composition of the Fourth Gospel in the Prochorus Acts. The wall-painting presents visually the Patmos-Sinai typology of the Prochorus Acts, the mountain being a place of divine revelation on which the completed revelation in Christ is received. The threefold mountain peak may evoke the tradition orally

80 Renaud 1943; Willoughby 1940: I, 105–6; Brunet-Dinard 1954. For the image, see Renaud 1943: 221 (figure 1). 81 Becker 2008: 89. 82 Among the rare exceptions among Western artists who depict John as an older man are Giotto, Botticelli, Duvet, and Poussin. 83 See Willoughby 1940: I, 87–9. The two alternatives depict John seated at a desk on Patmos, acting as his own scribe, and a standing John, receptive to his apocalyptic vision. 84 For the image, see Kominis (ed.) 1988: 101. E. Papatheophanous-Tsouri has shown that this depicts the writing of the Apocalypse rather than the Gospel, though without the cave: Papatheophanous-Tsouri 1989: 181–91.

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transmitted on Patmos, whereby the divine voice caused the rock to split into three, a symbol of the Trinity.

The Cave Tradition Commenting on an early 14th-century Gospel book in the monastery library on Patmos, Nansy Ševčenko offers the following description of a typical Johannine image: The last of these four portraits, that of St. John on fol.238v, shows the Evangelist standing and dictating to Prochoros, his young disciple and scribe (Pl. 25). Prochoros sits on a rock nearby writing the words K IæåB fi ‘In the beginning’, (Jn 1:1) into a book. Behind the figures looms a bleak and craggy mountainside.85

The mountainside contains a large cave, at the entrance to which Prochorus sits. According to Ševčenko, this is one of the earliest depictions of John and Prochorus to contain the cave. The cave itself apparently makes its first appearance a couple of decades earlier, although without Prochorus, in a mosaic in the Church of the Holy Apostles, Salonica (c.1310–1315).86 It becomes a common feature of portraits of John throughout the 14th and 15th centuries (Plate 2). The most obvious source is again the Prochorus Acts, in this case the expanded version which describes the writing of the Apocalypse. In the 1335 manuscript and many other examples, we have a merging of both scenes: the dictation of the Gospel combined with the presence of the cave associated with the Book of Revelation (interestingly at a time when Eastern attitudes towards the Apocalypse were becoming more positive).87 The cave becomes a fixed iconographical feature for subsequent icon writers, as in a wall-painting of St John and Prochorus to the right of the iconostasis in the main monastery church on Patmos, dated to c.1600.88 The Painter’s Manual of Dionysius of Fourna (c.1730–1734) provides the following instructions for painting Rev. 1: A cave, and seated in it is Saint John the Divine, looking behind him with ecstasy. Behind him on clouds is Christ wearing a shining robe and a golden belt, and holding seven stars in his right hand, while a two-edged sword comes out from his mouth. Around him are seven candlesticks, and a great light radiates from him.89 Ševčenko 1989: 169. Ševčenko 1989: 176. 87 E.g. the defence of its canonical status by Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos (c.1256– 1335), priest-poet of St Sophia: Mouriki and Ševčenko 1988: 295. One interesting example has John writing the Apocalypse and Prochorus inscribing the Gospel simultaneously (Hanover, Dartmouth College, Department of Art, Lord Collection of Icons, No. 36). 88 For the image, see Kollias 1988: 58. 89 Hetherington 1974: 46, 255. 85 86

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Although the depiction of the risen Christ advocated by the Painter’s Manual is based on early 16th-century German woodcuts, the cave is typically Eastern, with only very rare examples from the West.90 It is present also in Dionysius of Fourna’s instructions for illustrating the Four Evangelists: ‘Know this, that Matthew, Mark and Luke are represented inside houses, whenever they are writing, while John [is shown] in the cave with Prochorus’.91 This Byzantine pattern is also closely followed in Russia. A 16th-century example, the left leaf of a Royal Door, the central door of an iconostasis (Coll. Bobinskoy, London), presents an elderly John seated in a rocky cavern in the desert, listening to a voice from heaven, and dictating the opening words of the Gospel to Prochorus. Following Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. 3.2.8), and against Western tradition, the symbol of St John at the top of this panel is the lion.92 Besides the influence of the expanded Prochorus Acts, a number of other reasons may explain the introduction of the cave into the iconographical tradition. The first is the impetus provided by the identification of a cave on Patmos in the late 11th century, when Christodoulos founded his monastery on the island. Second, the growth of monasticism itself, and the Greek hesychast tradition, was closely associated with caves.93 The figure of John and his life on Patmos more generally have been important for hesychasm since the 14th century, especially in its debates about the mystical union of humans with God. The 1335 Gospel book discussed by Ševčenko would have been designed for monastic use on Patmos, with marginal indicators pointing to a liturgical setting.94 Examples in icons would have been more flexible in assisting personal prayer and mysticism, presenting the Patmos cave, and not simply the figures of the saints, as a window onto heaven. Some of these icons were not free-standing but part of the iconostasis in Orthodox churches, as in the Cave of the Apocalypse on Patmos (located to the left of the Royal Door, a position normally reserved for icons of the Theotokos). The Russian example mentioned above was a panel of the central Royal Door, symbolizing the entrance into the Kingdom of God.95 In the biblical tradition, there was also the association of caves with revelation, especially Elijah’s cave on Horeb which seems to have inspired the author of the relevant passage in the Prochorus Acts. That at least some Byzantine 90 James notes one example in a German Apocalypse (Brit. Mus. Add. 15243 (Duke of Sussex, Lot 81, fol. 2), with full-page pictures and a German text: ‘John sitting in a cave in a rock with trees growing on it’: James 1927: 45. 91 Hetherington 1974: 53, 314–15. The Painter’s Manual has a separate model for Prochorus, among the ‘seventy apostles’: ‘Prochorus, a grey-haired man with a short beard divided into two points’ (Hetherington 1974: 53, 315). 92 Ouspensky and Lossky 1969: 115. The eagle gradually replaces the lion in Russian icons towards the end of the 16th century. 93 Sherrard 1960: 6–11. 94 Mouriki and Ševčenko 1988: 293. 95 Ouspensky 1992: II, 278–9.

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interpreters made the link between the Patmos and Horeb caves is shown by comparing icons of John and Elijah. The latter is unusual among Old Testament figures for having his own icon, which places him within, or outside, a craggy cave, holding a scroll in his right hand.96

An Eastern Version of the Life of John Given their detailed apocryphal account of John’s lengthy stay on Patmos, the Prochorus Acts have also inspired artists interested in the wider biography of the seer and his companion, not least on Patmos itself. A series of 17thcentury frescoes, on the walls of the exonarthex to the main monastic church in the Monastery of St John, draw their inspiration from selected scenes of the Prochorus Acts, and the rich oral tradition inspired by such a text. The focus here is upon John as miracle-worker and hero, who converts the priests of Apollo, raises the dead, and battles against the forces of magic. Central to this fresco cycle is John’s dramatic defeat of the local god-like magician Kynops, who is turned into stone in the sea off Patmos. It represents a distinctive Eastern counterpart, in both content and iconography, to the medieval Western interest in the hagiography of John (reflected in the AngloNorman Apocalypses, and the Master Bertram altarpiece).97

Patmos as Sacred Place One further feature exploited by some Eastern illustrators is the transformation of Patmos into a sacred place as a consequence of the revelations received. In a number of the visions, John is apparently back on earth after his ascent into heaven at Rev. 4:1. Moreover, there is an unclear relationship between the mythical geography his book describes and his terrestrial setting on Patmos. This ambiguity is well exemplified in the Elizabeth Day McCormick Codex (Chicago MS 931). This is an early 17th-century vernacular Greek translation of the Apocalypse with commentary, utilizing both Andreas of Caesarea and Arethas, together with an unusual cycle of sixty-nine illustrations.98 The title provided by its scribe attributes the translation to ‘the most wise Maximos, the 96

Ouspensky and Lossky 1969: 142. For a description, see Fougère and Fougère 1975: 49; for some images, see www.patmosmonastery.gr/eksona1.html. 98 This manuscript was unknown to Montague James when he wrote the following: ‘I have hitherto failed to find any indication that the Apocalypse as a separate book with pictures existed in Greek lands. Not even in the form of marginal illustrations of a New Testament’: James 1931: 74f. 97

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Peloponnesian’, most likely Maximos of Kallipolis, closely associated with Patriarch Cyril Lucar of Constantinople, the latter remembered for the relations he fostered between the Orthodox and the Churches of the Reformation.99 In fol. 114r (illustrating Rev. 14:1–5), Patmos has become Mount Zion, on which the Lamb sits, accompanied by the army of the saved including both clergy and laity. Jerusalem, or its Temple, has come to this tiny island. The traditional Eastern cave serves as a recurring motif through the manuscript.100 In this image, it provides John with shelter directly below the sacred mountain. Equally illuminating is fol. 181v (the illustration for Rev. 22:1–2). Here the river of life flows along the edge of a triangular Patmos; the tree of life stands opposite the island, with two peacocks, symbols of immortality in both pagan and Christian art.

RENAISSANCE AND EARLY MODERN PAINTINGS AND ALTARPIECES John on Patmos becomes an increasingly important subject for Western artists from the 15th century onwards, attested in altarpieces, other paintings, and woodcuts. Art historians note a shift in interpretations of the scene with the Renaissance and Reformation. In Galavaris’s assessment, Patmos ceases to be a mere backdrop to horrifying visions and gains attention in its own right, ‘as a landscape, related to the Evangelist, and appropriate to the role which this holy island has played in Christian history’.101 Often this concentration on the Patmos ‘moment’ betrays fascination with the character of the vision which Patmos witnesses, and the possibilities that might hold for both artist and viewer of the resulting image. While Memling retains an interest in the unfolding visions, presenting scenes from Rev. 5–13 in bold synchronic display in his Bruges St John Altarpiece (1474–1479), the focus is on the large figure of John the seer, who looks not directly at the apocalyptic events unfolding on the canvas but sees them ‘in the Spirit’.102 Unusually, Memling’s Apocalypse panel portrays not simply terrestrial Patmos, on which John sits in contemplative pose, undisturbed by the violence around him, but also a smaller ‘visionary Patmos’ in the background, to which the woman descends in her flight from the dragon, and on whose seashore 99

Willoughby 1940: I, 4–5. In fols 139 v and 141v, for example, John and the angelus interpres shelter in the cave as they witness the vision of Babylon. 101 Galavaris 1998: 254. 102 van der Meer 1978: 258–71. See O’Hear 2011: 87–104 for a detailed discussion of Memling’s altarpiece. 100

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John-as-protagonist stands to receive the ‘little book’ (actually half his size) from the mighty angel. In contrast, Titian’s St John the Evangelist on Patmos (c.1544–1547; National Gallery, Washington) portrays only the smallest tip of Patmos’s highest point, on which a foreshortened John stands with arms raised in prayer, gazing at the vision of God the Father with angels in the bright clouds above.103 Painted on canvas for the ceiling of the Scuola di San Giovanni Evangelista in Venice, it gives the viewers below the impression of standing on the lower part of Patmos, but with their attention directed heavenwards. Titian emphasizes the meeting of God and humanity, rather than the earthly context within which that meeting takes place. In some cases, renewed focus on the visionary of Patmos betrays a desire on the part of the artist to ‘see again’ with John’s eyes, in a dramatic form of actualization. There is some evidence that Albrecht Dürer cast himself in the mould of an alter Iohannes as well as an alter Christus,104 while Jean Duvet has unambiguously depicted himself as an elderly John of Patmos in the 1555 frontispiece to his Apocalypse engravings.105 The inscription above the swan with an arrow in its beak—a symbol of approaching death—in the right-hand corner reads: ‘The fates are pressing; already the hands tremble and the sight fails, yet the mind remains victorious and the great work is completed’ (fata preūnt trepidant manvs iam lumina fallunt mens restat victrix grāde de svadet opus).106 The backdrop to Patmos is a city resembling Geneva where Duvet sought self-imposed exile, reinforcing Duvet’s claim to ‘see again’ in his own Apocalypse engravings what John once saw.107 Dürer and Duvet are not isolated examples. Frederick van der Meer sees a strong family resemblance between Memling’s St John and Memling himself, while Velázquez’s John has also been seen as a self-portrait.108 William Blake too, though in a rather different fashion, sought to identify himself and his inspiration with John ‘as the archetypal artist-visionary of the Christian West’.109 It may not be irrelevant that many artists who have depicted John on Patmos themselves share his name (Jean, Jan, Hans, Johannes), including both Memling and Duvet.110 Some of these at least would have claimed a special relationship to John as their patron saint and invoked his intercession.

103

Wethey 1969: 137–8. O’Hear 2011: 149, 164–5. On Dürer as visionary, see Camille 1992: 289. 105 Duvet 1976; Rowland 2005: 304–5. 106 Rowland 2005: 305. 107 Eisler 1979: 301–2. 108 Lewis 1993: 22; van der Meer 1978: 265. 109 Lewis 1993: 18. 110 Other ‘Johns’ who depicted John and his Apocalypse include Jan Wellens de Cock, Hans Schäufelein, Hans Burgkmair the Elder, and Hans Holbein the Younger. 104

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Alternatively, or in addition, the landscape of Patmos becomes the focus of attention in its own right. One of the most striking examples is Hans Burgkmair’s transformation of Patmos into a tropical island, reminiscent of depictions of the Garden of Eden (to be considered in more detail below). Dürer’s woodcut illustrating Rev. 10, the closest he has to a depiction of Patmos, presents John at the border of a forest, the young leaves on the outer branches of the tree perhaps symbolizing the new growth which his prophetic book promises. In Nicolas Poussin’s Landscape with St. John on Patmos (c.1644– 1645, Chicago Art Institute), Patmos is imagined as a spacious and calm landscape dotted with Greek buildings, the Apocalypse’s new world embracing the ancient world out of which it is born.111 Given the diversity of artistic depictions of John and Patmos from the 15th century onwards, four works have been selected for closer attention. These represent a wide chronological period (the 15th to the 17th centuries), from different parts of Christian Europe (the Netherlands: Hieronymus Bosch; Italy: Sandro Botticelli; Germany: Hans Burgkmair the Elder; Spain: Diego Velázquez), and exemplify both typical examples of their period and some particularly original reworkings of the theme.

HIERONYMUS BOSCH, S T J O H N O N P A T M O S (C. 1 4 85 – 1 5 0 0) Hieronymus Bosch’s St John on Patmos (Gemälde Galerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin), attributed to Bosch’s middle period, is one of a number of portrayals by Bosch of saints in contemplative pose.112 Bosch, or Jerome van Aaken (c.1450–1516),113 was an active member of the Brotherhood of Our Lady (for whom he executed a number of commissions), and was influenced by the ideas of Jan van Ruysbroek or Ruusbroec (1293–1381) and his Brethren of the Common Life, with their emphasis upon prayer and contemplation.114 111 Probably commissioned by his patron Cardinal Francesco Barbarini along with the earlier Landscape with St Matthew and the Angel. On dating, see Blunt 1966: 59–60; also Blunt 1944: 156. On Poussin’s career in Rome, see Rosenberg and Damian 1995: 5–16; Cropper and Dempsey 1996: 24. 112 For descriptions, see e.g. Combe 1946: 36; Gibson 1973a: 136–8; Marijnissen and Ruyffelaere 1987: 284–91; van Schoute and Verboomen 2000: 110–13. 113 His more famous name is derived from his town of ‘s Hertogenbosch (French Bois-leDuc) in the Netherlands. 114 Combe 1946: 16; van Ruysbroek’s Brethren had houses in ‘s Hertogenbosch (the first opened in 1424, a second in 1480). Snyder (1980: 18) notes that the motif of the hermit saint in the desert served for the Brethren of the Common Life as a model for the Christian solitary life.

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Bosch’s St John on Patmos (Plate 3) bears a strong compositional resemblance to an engraving of the scene by Martin Schongauer.115 However, its ‘genre’ is very different: it is an oil painting on panel. Moreover, the fact that there is a painting on the reverse has led to two rival proposals about its use. For Fraenger, it was intended as a Umwendbild (‘reversable picture’) for meditation, with the grisaille ‘reverse’ as the ‘front’, the focus for preliminary meditation before turning over to the colour of the visionary world.116 Majority opinion favours the second suggestion that it was intended to be the right wing of an altarpiece, perhaps with his Saint John the Baptist, now in Madrid, as the left (parallelling Memling’s altarpiece).117 This is reinforced by the fact that the grisaille technique is commonly used by Bosch for the exterior of his altarpieces.118 Ester Vink has made an even more specific proposal: that these were the two doors which Bosch almost certainly painted for the altarpiece commissioned by the Brotherhood of Our Lady, for its chapel in St John’s Cathedral in ‘s Hertogenbosch.119 Bosch’s panel depicts an idyllic landscape at the centre of which a very young John sits in contemplative pose, pen poised to write as he gazes at the Virgin and Child in the top left. Following a tradition which goes back at least to Bede, he is identical to the bridegroom in Bosch’s Marriage Feast of Cana.120 To the extreme right is a tall, thin tree, which connects earth with heaven. The picture offers a good example of Bosch’s ‘three-distance landscape’ formula. This achieves a sense of space by using deep greens and browns in the foreground of Patmos, light blues and pale greens in the middle distance, and grey-blue tonalities on the horizon, where a Netherlandish city provides a contemporary milieu.121 The exception is the grey-blue of the angel standing on the hill behind John in the front register, which renders him less substantial than the island itself, John the seer, and the heavenly vision to which the angel points. The tranquillity of the scene is muted slightly by a cluster of burning ships in the water behind Patmos. A figure in the immediate foreground heightens this sense of threat: a little beetle-like devil with stunted hands on the bottom right, juxtaposed with the celestial vision in the top left, and apparently engaged in a stand-off with John’s traditional eagle. Carl Linfert describes

115

Schongauer’s image is reproduced at van Schoute and Verboomen 2000: 113. In Fraenger’s view the St John figure represents Jakob van Almaengien, identified by Fraenger as Grand Master of the heretical Brethren of the Free Spirit (or Adamites), of which he claims Bosch himself was a member: Fraenger 1949–1950: 336–9, 342–5. 117 Snyder 1980: 20; Marijnissen and Ruyffelaere 1987: 287. Bosch’s triptych in the Doge’s Palace in Venice depicts three hermit saints in the desert, Jerome, Giles, and Anthony. 118 Jacobs 2000: 1024. 119 Vink 2001: 22. 120 Gibson 1973a: 30–1. 121 Snyder 1980: 88–90. 116

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this creature as ‘surely the most extraordinary monster in any picture by Bosch, a unique hybrid of insect, reptile, and machinery and, in this painting, an isolated warning of dire things to come’.122 His spectacles have led to suggestions that Bosch intends an ‘anti-clerical jibe’, or that the demon exhibits a ‘donnish’ scepticism about the validity of John’s unfolding vision.123 Whatever he represents, the creature no doubt intends to use the hook beside him (a typical instrument of torture in medieval depictions of hell) to steal John’s inkwell, thus preventing the preservation of John’s revelation for posterity. A possible model for this detail is a miniature of the scene in a Utrecht Lectionary of 1443 (Den Haag, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, MS.69 B10), where the devil escapes the eagle’s gaze.124 Bosch’s eagle is far too small to be able to drive the demonic creature away; Rowland suggests that the Johannine eagle has been transformed by Bosch into a raven, linking this scene to the Elijah story.125 Linfert writes of the surprising tranquillity of Bosch’s painting that ‘this restrained quiet is nothing other than the breathless hush which, whenever Bosch painted it, always goes hand in hand with mastery over even the wildest onslaughts of evil forces’.126 This tamed evil bursts out on the other side of Bosch’s panel, Scenes from the Passion (Plate 4). The black background to the roundel contains sea monsters and demon-like figures, barely visible to the human eye. Indeed, given the size of the panel (only 6343.3cm) and its probable display in an altarpiece at some distance from the congregation (albeit in a small side chapel), this may be a secret detail accessible to only a few. In the centre of this side of the panel is a double circle composition (39cm in diameter) in grisaille, which several scholars have plausibly identified as both a spiritual mirror and the eye of God.127 Bosch may have been influenced by Nicholas of Cusa’s treatise De visione Dei (1453), which describes the divine eye as a mirror reflecting the whole of creation: But Thy sight, being an eye or living mirror, seeth all things in itself. Nay more, because it is the cause of all things visible, it embraceth and seeth all things in the cause and reason of all, that is, in itself.128

In contrast to Bosch’s Prado Tabletop, where the divine eye reflects humanity’s seven deadly sins with the warning cave, cave, dominus videt (‘Beware, beware, the Lord sees’), the Scenes from the Passion—intended to be viewed when the altarpiece was closed—have been interpreted as revealing the 122 123 124 125 126 127 128

Linfert 1972: 100. Lewis 1993: 21; Kovacs and Rowland 2004: 49. Marijnissen and Ruyffelaere 1987: 287. Rowland 2005: 306. Linfert 1972: 100. Linfert 1959: 115–17; 1972: 28–9; Jacobs 2000. Nicholas of Cusa 1928: 37.

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compassionate eye of the suffering God, inviting the sinful viewer to contemplate the nature of his or her salvation through Christ’s sacrifice.129 This sacrifice is portrayed in the outer circle (the ‘iris’ of the divine eye) by eight episodes from the Passion of Christ, starting with Gethsemane on the middle right, and following in a clockwise sequence to the crucifixion at the top (where John makes an appearance comforting the Virgin Mary), followed by the burial as the final scene. The characters are sketched in a dynamic and impressionistic fashion, using the alla prima technique unique to Bosch, in which the images are painted directly onto the panel with neither preliminary drawings nor glazes.130 In the central circle or ‘pupil’ is a hill, on which a pelican feeds her young. Several scholars highlight the traditional connection between the mother pelican, who was believed to feed her young with her blood by pricking her own breast, and Christ’s sacrifice; thus the hill on which the pelican stands is the hill of Calvary.131 However, one should not ignore its probable ‘geography’ as a panel in an altarpiece: the pelican is also a potent symbol of Christ feeding his people with his own body and blood in the Eucharist.132 The precise relationship between the two sides puzzles art historians, and this is complicated by the fact—well illustrated by Lynn Jacobs—that Bosch has subverted the traditional hierarchy which accorded higher significance to the inside panels of a triptych. The greater complexity of Bosch’s exteriors means that interior and exterior are equally important components.133 One possibility is worth considering, however; that Bosch is evoking the wellestablished tradition according to which the Apocalypse was the explication of the heavenly mysteries revealed to John while he reclined on the Lord’s breast at the Last Supper. The interior and exterior of the panel then mutually interpret each other, with the grisaille exterior visualizing the ‘inner meaning’ of the vision being received on Patmos in the polychrome interior. The plausibility of this is strengthened by the visual similarity between this John and the bridegroom of Bosch’s Marriage at Cana, given that this connection is often part of the narrative which links the Patmos vision with the vision on the Lord’s breast.134 An additional link is offered by Dante, who describes John as the beloved disciple who had rested his head on the breast of 129

Gibson 1973b: 223; Jacobs 2000: 1030. Snyder 1980: 92. 131 E.g. Gibson 1973a: 138; Snyder 1980: 94. Snyder makes the further tentative suggestion that the red flames at the bottom of the hill, ‘in a shallow grave’, are a reference to the phoenix, the traditional symbol of Christ’s resurrection. 132 On the relationship between altarpieces and eucharistic worship and teaching, as well as their devotional function, see Williamson 2004. 133 Jacobs 2000: 1009–12. In the case of Scenes from the Passion, several orange and yellow flames help reduce the contrast with the coloured interior of St John on Patmos (Jacobs 2000: 1025). 134 E.g. Volfing 2001: 24, 26–41, 108–19. 130

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the Divine Pelican (Paradiso 25), and who is thus among those young being fed on the central hill of the exterior. A further reason for thinking that Bosch is presenting the essence of the Patmos revelation on the grisaille exterior is the vision of the woman clothed with the sun which John sees (depicted as a typical Virgin and Child, thus giving a mariological interpretation to Rev. 12), and to which the angel points. An initial connection is provided by the fact that Mary and John appear together on the exterior, where John comforts her at the crucifixion. Moreover, there are details in the vision of Rev. 12 which suggest it contains a visionary account of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection: e.g. the juxtaposition of the ‘birth’ of the male child with his being ‘caught up to God’ (Rev. 12:5; cf. 1:5 where Christ is called ‘firstborn of the dead’), or the declaration that the dragon has been conquered ‘by the blood of the Lamb’ (12:11). If this interpretation is in any way valid, then Bosch’s Patmos is the external gateway into the interior mystery of Christ’s passion. There is a striking visual resemblance between the two central hills on each side of the panel: the angel’s hill of revelation on Patmos, and the pelican’s hill of Calvary which reflects the view of the divine eye. A similar sea- and townscape in the background to each serves to accentuate the relationship. It may be that the blue-grey angel on the hill of Patmos is pointing not simply to the vision of the woman clothed with the sun, but also to the grisaille hill of Calvary on the reverse.

SANDRO BOTTICELLI, SAN MARCO ALTARPIECE ( C.1 4 9 0 ) Botticelli’s original interpretation of St John the Evangelist on Patmos is a scene on the predella of Botticelli’s San Marco Altarpiece (Uffizi, Florence), the main panel of which depicts the Coronation of the Virgin. This altarpiece, completed in 1490, was commissioned by the Guild of Goldsmiths, for their guild chapel in Florence’s Dominican Church of San Marco.135 In the main panel (Plate 5), Mary’s coronation takes place in the golden celestial realm, where an apocalyptic theme is provided by the circle of dancing angels (possibly inspired by Fra Angelico’s depiction of the same scene).136 The lower terrestrial register depicts four saints: John, Augustine, Jerome, and Eligius, patron saint of the goldsmiths, in whose chapel the altarpiece was located.137 St John was patron saint of the Guild of Silk 135

For dating, see Horne 1980: 168–9. Ettlinger and Ettlinger 1976: 74. Both Augustine and Jerome were believed to have written texts (now shown to be wrongly attributed) about the Assumption of the Virgin: Canera 1990: 102. 136 137

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Merchants, under which the goldsmiths’ guild was subsumed.138 However, Botticelli also seems to have included him here to link his Apocalypse (especially its vision of the woman clothed with the sun) with Mary’s Coronation taking place in heaven. John stands as if pointing to his vision with his left hand; in his right hand he holds an open book still to be written on. It is in the small predella panel, however, that Patmos is depicted (Plate 6).139 Patmos is a small, unprepossessing island, detached from the rest of the world. Although there are Italian antecedents for Botticelli’s depiction of John’s island (Giotto’s Peruzzi fresco and Donatello’s painted stucco mentioned earlier, as well as Paolo Uccello’s 1435–40 altarpiece for the Church of San Bartolomeo in Quarate), Botticelli’s interpretation is striking for two unique features. The first is the elongated figure of John, apparently lost in an inspired act of automatic writing. Its juxtaposition to the main panel might suggest that he is recording the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin he has seen in vision (i.e. the contents of Rev. 12). Botticelli’s depiction betrays ‘a tremor of anxiety, of anguish and new aspirations’.140 One possible explanation of this mixture of anxiety and hope is the influence of the Dominican Girolamo Savonarola.141 Savonarola returned to Florence in May 1490, the year in which Botticelli’s altarpiece was finished. Given Botticelli’s connection with the Church of San Marco, it is plausible that he heard some of Savonarola’s sermons on the Apocalypse, which began in August of the same year.142 Savonarola will later recall the theme of these sermons: a call for reform of the Church, and a warning of the imminence of un grande flagello, a ‘great scourge’ of the Church in Italy.143 Botticelli’s St John the Evangelist on Patmos contains another unusual feature: the piles of rocks behind John, painted with harsh lines.144 Rita de Angelis has suggested that such a feature in this and other of Botticelli’s paintings symbolizes the folly of worldly attractions.145 But a more specific proposal can be made: the book-like quality of the rocks on the top of the pile to the left of the panel suggests less a rocky outcrop than a library of petrified books. Although turning his back on them, John sits on their supporting platform as he scribbles, as if in some way dependent upon them.

138

Deimling 2000: 69. One of five picking up on characters from the main panel (the others being: St Augustine in his study; the Annunciation; the penitent St Jerome; the Miracle of St Eligius). The size of all five is 21  269 cm in total, making this a small image (the main panel is 378  258 cm). 140 Venturi 1961. 141 Cecchi 2005: 260; on Savonarola and Botticelli generally, see Hankins 1997. 142 These sermons continued at least until Epiphany of the following year. 143 Savonarola 1996: 44; see also Rodolfi 1959: 32. 144 Some have posited the influence of Leonardo da Vinci in this, especially his St Jerome, Madonna in the Grotto, and The Resurrection: Bode 1925: 95. 145 de Angelis 1980: 7. 139

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One explanation for their bookish form is that they symbolize the prophetic books of the Old Testament, which are being superseded by the new revelation John now transcribes in the book on his lap. An alternative possibility, taking account of Savonarola’s influence, is that they represent the old order which is passing away, or specifically the beginnings of a rejection of humanism’s ‘new learning’. The newly discovered texts of the classical world, the world to which Patmos belonged, would then be as petrified books in the face of the fresh inspiration John receives there. Signs of new life (grass sprouting on the top of the rock-library) are just visible on the top left of the panel. Botticelli’s interpretation of Patmos, as a harsh rock-face able to generate new revelation, is one of the most original provided by visual artists. It is also arguably an example of actualization, according to which the text of Revelation provides the lens through which a reader or interpreter views his or her own situation: in this case the fate of Italy and the city of Florence in the last decade of the 15th century.

HANS BURGKMAIR THE ELDER, ST JOHN THE EVANGELIST ON PATMOS (1508/1518) In sharp contrast to Botticelli’s interpretation stands the painting by his German contemporary Hans Burgkmair the Elder (1473–1531), who spent much of his life in the imperial city of Augsburg (Plate 7).146 Burgkmair’s St John the Evangelist in Patmos (Alte Pinakothek, Munich) is the central panel of an altarpiece (painted on pine, 153124.7cm), the side panels depicting St Nicholas and St Erasmus. Burgkmair seems to be tapping into that more positive pattern of Apocalypse exegesis which is exemplified also in Berengaudus’s commentary and the van Eyck altarpiece in Ghent,147 and shaped in particular by the new possibilities raised by contemporary events. The compositional form of Burgkmair’s altarpiece is fairly typical of late 15th- and early 16th-century Northern European art. It is particularly close to the engraving of the scene by Burgkmair’s teacher Schongauer (which in turn has strong similarities to Bosch’s Patmos), Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut of John devouring the book (illustrating Rev. 10),148 and St John at Patmos (c.1515; Metropolitan Museum, New York) by Hans Baldung Grien, who trained in

146

Burgkmair also produced a set of twenty-one woodcuts for a Lutheran New Testament published in Augsburg in 1523: Carey 1999: 148–53. 147 For the optimistic focus of the Berengaudus commentary, and its possible influence on the van Eyck altarpiece in Ghent, see Visser 1996. 148 For the image, see O’Hear 2011: Figure 36.

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Dürer’s workshop. John, a young man wearing a red or pink cloak, sits on Patmos slightly right of centre, gazing up to a heavenly vision in the top left. Heaven and earth are connected by the trunk of a vertical tree on the far right. Yet Burgkmair has transformed the typical scene into a tropical island with lush foliage.149 Palm trees have been introduced, bent by the wind or perhaps by the Spirit of inspiration. The Johannine eagle has been joined by a South American macaw, and other exotic birds and reptiles. This is an earthly paradise (although the wild, snow-capped mountains in the background might suggest a non-literal geography). The tree on the far right has been identified as the legendary dragon tree, common in depictions of the Garden of Eden from the 15th century onwards.150 Indeed, there are striking visual and compositional similarities between this painting, and a woodcut by Burgkmair himself depicting Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (1525, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). For Burgkmair, Patmos has become John’s Eden, the terrestrial place in which paradise is regained. As George Galavaris puts it: ‘Patmos is the link between the earthly and the heavenly, the place of Jacob’s ladder. It embodies the first days of the Creation and, through the vision, the last days of the world.’151 The broader cultural context of Burgkmair’s painting is also of significance, specifically the eschatological excitement generated by explorations in the new world. Christopher Columbus’s Book of Prophecies (begun in 1500–1501, with the assistance of Gaspar Gorricio, a Carthusian monk of Seville),152 included biblical passages (e.g. Ps. 71:2; Isa. 24:4) prophesying the conversion of the islands, together with Seneca’s prophecy which envisages the discovery of new worlds beyond the limits of Ultima Thule or Tile.153 Direct influence of the Apocalypse is attested in a letter written by Columbus in 1500: God made me the messenger of the new heaven and the new earth, of which He spoke in the Apocalypse by St. John, after having spoken of it by the mouth of Isaiah; and He showed me the spot where to find it.154

This apocalyptic expectation is also reflected in a letter (Mundus novus) of Amerigo Vespucci to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, describing his discovery of ‘new regions and an unknown world’:

149 von der Osten and Vey (1969: 112) suggest that the preliminary study for the central panel was a pen-and-ink drawing now in Stockholm. 150 Mason 2006: 179. 151 Galavaris 1989: 255. 152 Rusconi 1997. 153 Rusconi 1997: 290–1; on apocalyptic speculation relating to the New World, see Phelan 1956: 17–27. 154 Letter to a former nurse of Prince John; cited in Froom 1946–1952: II, 170.

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First, then, the people. We found such a great multitude of people in those regions that no one could count their number (as one reads in the book of the Apocalypse); a gentle, tractable people.155

Later in the same letter, he writes that ‘if anywhere in the world there exists an Earthly Paradise, I think it is not far from those regions, which lie, as I said, to the south, and in such a temperate climate that they never have either icy winters or scorching summers’.156 It is unlikely that Burgkmair had read Columbus’s Book of Prophecies (which remained initially in manuscript form). Indeed, he seems more familiar with Portuguese expeditions to the East.157 However, it provides a vivid example of the kind of theological speculation and optimism circulating at the beginning of the 16th century. Burgkmair portrays John’s island of Patmos as an anticipation of that new world emerging in his own day. The fact that he has chosen to do so in the central panel of an altarpiece also invites speculation as to the extent to which the eucharistic context is also important: the Mass as the liturgical rite through which the disjunction between heaven and earth is temporarily transcended, and the future hope for the new Jerusalem anticipated.

DIEGO VELÁZQUEZ, ST JOHN TH E EVANGELIST ON THE ISLAND OF PATMOS (1618–1 6 1 9 ) Our final example is from post-Tridentine Spain: St John the Evangelist on the Island of Patmos (oil on canvas, 135.8102.3cm; National Gallery, London) by Diego Velázquez (Plate 8).158 This painting is probably a pendant to his Immaculate Conception in which Mary is depicted as the heavenly woman clothed with the sun of Rev. 12. Their first attestation is in the chapter house of the Calced (or Shod) Carmelite convent in Seville in 1800, and it is quite likely that it was the Carmelites, committed to defending the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, who originally commissioned them.159 Velázquez would have been just nineteen or twenty when he painted St John the Evangelist on the Island of Patmos, soon after marrying the daughter of the artist Francisco Pacheco, to whom he had been apprenticed.160 Eschewing the 155

Formisano (ed.) 1992: 48, apparently alluding to Rev. 7:9. Formisano (ed.) 1992: 52. 157 In 1508 Burgkmair produced a set of woodcuts linked to a journey made to the East by a German merchant, Balthasar Springer, in the wake of the voyages of the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama: Oakeshott 1960: 4–5, 15, and figs 11, 16 and 43. 158 Drury 1999: 170–5; Rowland 2005: 306–7. 159 Carr et al. 2006: 132. On the importance of the Immaculate Conception in 17th-century Seville, see also Reeves 1997: 193–6. 160 López-Rey 1980: 7–9. 156

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advice of his father-in-law (who in his Arte de la Pintura argued that paintings of St John writing the Apocalypse should present him as an old man, ‘anciano y venerable’),161 Velázquez’s John is a youthful muscular figure, possibly even a self-portrait.162 It is one striking example of Velázquez’s capacity for conveying the sacred through naturalism.163 Again, the composition of the scene is a typical one (as found already in Bosch, Dürer, Schongauer, and Burgkmair, and probably derived by Velázquez directly from 16th-century Flemish precedents). John the visionary, a tree to his right, sits in mid-vision, his book on his lap as he prepares to write. In the top left, the viewer can see the content of his current vision: the woman clothed with the sun of Rev. 12, this time accompanied by the dragon. The woman and the dragon are clearly based on an illustration from Luis de Alcázar’s Vestigatio arcani sensus Apocalypsi, published in Antwerp in 1614.164 But Velázquez has departed from his predecessors by choosing to portray Patmos at night, a possible hint that the visionary has experienced the ‘dark night of the soul’, associated with the Spanish Carmelite St John of the Cross, in preparation for his vision.165 His use of light emphasizes the figure of John, dominating the whole canvas. This lighting technique (also used in the Immaculate Conception) heightens the visionary effect, which would have been all the more striking in a dimly lit setting such as a chapter house.166 This privileges vision over location, a feature linked to the impact on Christian art of the Council of Trent.167 The result is that the landscape of Patmos is hard to detect, and even the Johannine eagle emerges only with difficulty from the shadows by John’s side. It is just possible to make out a bush behind him, and a glimpse of the sea beyond the island’s shore. The tree connecting him to heaven on the right of the canvas is old and gnarled, although there are signs of new shoots sprouting above the seer’s shoulder.

161

Pacheco 1990: 672; see López-Rey 1980: 56. Lewis 1993: 22; Harris 1996: 46; there is a close similarity between his ‘John’ and a slightly later portrait of a young man, thought to be a self-portrait: Harris 1982: 11, figure 5. Others suggest that he used a model in his late teens: Carr et al. 2006: 132. 163 Carr et al. 2006: 28. Of Velázquez’s Immaculate Conception, Carr writes that he ‘found purity in a simple Sevillian girl’. 164 Clarke (ed.) 1996: 46, fig. 5.3. 165 Galavaris 1998: 259; though John of the Cross, along with Teresa of Avila, is associated with the reformed ‘Discalced’ Carmelites. 166 Clarke (ed.) 1996: 158. 167 Galavaris 1989: 254. See also Véliz 2002: 12. Trent’s decree De invocatione, veneratione et reliquiis sanctorum, et de sacris imaginibus (3rd–4th December 1563), concerned as it is to rule out abuses, emphasizes the use of sacred images in enabling the faithful to ‘shape their own lives and conduct in imitation of the saints, and be aroused to adore and love God and to practise devotion’, and advocates that ‘all sensual appeal must be avoided, so that images are not painted or adorned with seductive charm’: Tanner (ed.) 1990: 774–6. 162

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The significance of this may be related to the similar contrast between the two books at the base of the tree by John’s feet, partly covered by his cloak, and the open book on his lap in which he has begun to write before being interrupted by the apocalyptic vision. Almost certainly a contrast is being set up by the previous revelation in the Old Testament, on which John is partly dependent, and the fresh revelation accessed on Patmos.168 The fact that there are two books on the ground, and that the volume on top is more worn and well-thumbed than the one underneath, might suggest that the former is the Bible (or the Old Testament) and the latter is John’s own newer Gospel, or perhaps a biblical commentary to which John has just referred (it contains a bookmark). Velázquez probably intends the Carmelite viewer to understand the fresh page on which John begins to write as the beginning of Rev. 12, providing divinely inspired authority for the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception the Carmelites are committed to defending.169 The book is open approximately halfway through, which is the position in the Apocalypse where the vision of the woman and the dragon begins. The fact that the left-hand page remains blank is explicable if the artist is depicting the Hebrew John as writing from right to left. Velázquez represents a shift away from that greater concentration on the landscape of Patmos, and its connection with the landscape of the contemporary world depicted in other late-medieval and early-modern depictions, to what Harry Maier calls the landscape ‘of John’s mind’.170 The priority is the interior vision of the seer, and (if this is indeed a self-portrait) Velázquez’s own re-imagining of the visionary moment in his two pendants for the Carmelites of Seville.

CO NCLUSION This survey has been far from exhaustive, given the mass of visual material available. However, the examples considered here have been selected in order to ensure exploration of the main visual receptions of John’s visionary island. As importantly, this chapter has sought to illustrate the capacity of the visual for exploring biblical scenes and narratives in a manner which the verbal exegesis of commentaries is unable to achieve. Visual representations are able to hold together in tension what are often treated in the commentaries as 168

For this proposal, see e.g. Rowland 2005: 307. In an anonymous 16th-century Spanish example in the monastery of El Escorial (The Vision of St John on Patmos), the opening words of Rev. 12:1 are still visible on John’s book: Et signum magnum paruit in caelo mulier amicta sole et luna sub pedibus eius et in capite. For the image, see Stoichita 1995: 110, fig. 43. 170 Maier 2002: 45. 169

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mutually exclusive options: a good example is the altarpiece from the workshop of Master Bertram, which presents the exilic, missionary, and visionary explanations of John’s Patmos sojourn in a single frame. The fairly stable tradition of Byzantine iconography means that the ‘cave’ tradition associated with John and Prochorus invites visual associations with the visionary cave of the prophet Elijah, without requiring complex verbal exegesis to establish the connection. Second, the visual has a more immediate capacity for participation, making explicit a phenomenon which is also present in non-visual forms of exegesis. Such participation may be on the part of the artist, notably those like Duvet who believe themselves to be sharing John’s prophetic-artistic inspiration, or ‘seeing again’ what John saw through their visual portrayal of his book (exemplars of the second type of actualization identified by Kovacs and Rowland). But the visual also invites the viewer to enter into what is being depicted, examples of which include the ‘surrogate pilgrimage-journey’ of the AngloNorman Apocalypses, or making the the landscape in Bosch’s painted panel contemporary. The fact that many of the visual depictions of Patmos were intended for contemplative or liturgical use (illuminated manuscripts, altarpieces, icons) prioritizes this participatory function. Finally, exploring visual images of Patmos brings into sharp focus a theme which has been running throughout this book: the extent to which all interpreters stand in a particular exegetical and imaginative tradition, with its often complex genealogical relationships, and biographical and cultural influences, although retaining the possibility of originality. Moreover, in a manner analogous to reader-focused interpretation of biblical texts, visual exegesis is interested not only in the ‘genre’ of a work of art, but also its geography or ‘theatre of reception’, and the potential impact of that for actual viewers and their apprehension of the work.

8 Hermeneutical Reflections I N T R O D U C TI O N The discussion has now come full circle. The results of the preceding analysis have confirmed the initial contention of this monograph (as set out in Chapter 1) that a probe into the reception history of this passage from the Book of Revelation would yield a much richer range of hermeneutical possibilities than a standard modern critical commentary might suggest (even allowing for the provisionality of the survey, related to the percentage of the ‘iceberg’ currently visible above the water).1 As explicitly acknowledged, the close reading of Rev. 1:9 offered in Chapter 1 was written in part retrospectively: an indication of the impact of readings to which an interpreter has been exposed on how that interpreter sees a text, and the range of questions posed to it (an aspect of what Gadamer calls wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewußtsein or ‘historically effected consciousness’).2 This analytical survey represents the main contribution of this book to knowledge in the area of Apocalypse studies. It has brought together for the first time in a systematic way a diverse body of material with often complex genealogical relationships, reflecting very different genres, chronological periods, and cultural contexts, and exhibiting a range of exegetical strategies for reading the book. Although breadth has been a major consideration throughout this monograph, care has been taken not to sacrifice depth. Hence the narrative has slowed at various points, to enable some of the more unusual interpretations of Patmos to be explored in greater detail, with closer attention to the interpreter’s own biographical details and cultural context. In particular, cognizance has been taken of a criticism often levelled against reception-historical studies, that they can be little more than an exercise in listing or cataloguing.3 This criticism has some validity, and the attention to genealogical relationships, hermeneutical strategies, and biographical and 1 2 3

Bockmuehl 1995: 66. Gadamer 1989: 300; see also Roberts and Rowland 2010: 131–2. E.g.
kland 2009: 23.

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cultural influence throughout this book reflects an attempt to take it seriously. Nevertheless, two points need to be made by way of qualification. This first is that reception history, as a form of ‘history’, already has an in-built analytical dimension. Rachel Nicholls writes, for example: ‘A “history” is not only a compilation of facts but an interpretation of their inter-relationships and their relative importance.’4 Similarly, Jonathan Roberts defines reception history as the process of collating ‘shards’ of reception material and ‘giving them a narrative frame’.5 Differences may lie in the manner of the analysis and the extent to which it is explicit, rather than in disagreement as to its necessity. The second point is that there is a qualitative difference between ‘listing’ and ‘cataloguing’, such that one should avoid blurring the distinction between the two. A catalogue for an art exhibition, for example, will organize the exhibits in a variety of ways, provide relevant information about size, content, patronage, or intended context of display, and the history of ownership of particular pieces; it may also offer general articles about broader cultural context, the biography of the artist(s), or painting techniques. A reception-historical study, particularly one such as this which is sufficiently broad enough to encompass a wide range of interpretations, may therefore be compared to a catalogue, but that in itself implies a degree of categorization, analysis, and reflection. Moreover, a broad reception-historical ‘catalogue’ can make a significant contribution to scholarship, serving as a springboard for more detailed studies of the specific examples it has collated, and for further exploration of material yet to be mined. The aim of this final chapter is to reflect more explicitly than in preceding chapters on what has been attempted there. It will begin by revisiting the potential of the text identified in Chapter 1, to consider how far this potential has been exploited in the reception history of the Apocalypse across the centuries. This will be followed by consideration of the different hermeneutical strategies at work, paying detailed attention to one very distinctive example from the preceding history of reception (the Prochorus Acts) which combines several types of interpretation in the one text. Finally, the implications of the findings of this study for wider scholarly interpretation of the Apocalypse and the New Testament will be considered. Before proceeding further, however, it may be helpful to summarize the benefits of attention to reception history which have emerged over the preceding chapters, in order to remind ourselves of what scholarship might have missed, or even forgotten, over the past century. First, it has opened up a wider variety of interpretative possibilities than a strictly historical-critical approach alone (or indeed, a purely narrative-critical approach) would yield. The decision to include as broad a range of interpretations as possible has highlighted

4

Nicholls 2005: 4–5.

5

Roberts 2011: 1.

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the ecumenical dimension of the reception-historical enterprise, not only confronting this particular (Roman Catholic) interpreter with unfamiliar readings from other Christian traditions, but also ensuring that ‘marginal’ as well as ‘centrist’, and ‘popular’ as well as ‘magisterial’ responses to the text are encountered. In Luz’s words, ‘it opens the eyes for new potentials of the texts. It shows not only what we have become through the texts but also what we could have been and what we could become’.6 Thus it is more truly ‘diachronic’ than the historical criticism to which this adjective is more normally attached, tracing readings ‘through time’ and across the centuries.7 Second, this approach has introduced real audiences, not just hypothetically reconstructed ‘original’ or ‘implied’ ones, providing some benchmark against which the latter reconstructions might be judged.8 Moreover, these audiences have been surprisingly diverse in the ways in which they have engaged with John’s text, imagined John’s Patmos context, and sought participation in the experience he underwent there. Third, it has served as a salutary reminder of the extent to which all readings of texts are historically conditioned, as all interpreters are affected by the Wirkungsgeschichte of which they are part. Again, to cite Luz: ‘the interpreter is like a person who must investigate the water of a river while sitting in a little boat which is carried and driven by this same river’.9 From a theological perspective, this points to the dynamic of tradition and the possibility of unfolding revelation as the biblical text confronts new situations and challenges, a process explored in detail by David Brown.10 These comments are pertinent to New Testament interpretation in general. However, the reception-historical approach taken here has also drawn attention to specific dimensions of a visionary text like the Apocalypse which are better explored via a wide range of genres, including non-verbal ones, than by the narrower focus on the ‘history of interpretation’. This is a point wellexemplified in the Blackwell Bible Commentary series. In the introduction to his excellent Blackwell commentary on Galatians, John Riches provides justification for his decision to focus on the written and preached word, and on classic commentators such as John Chrysostom, Augustine, and Luther, noting that the commentary genre is a particularly appropriate form for interpreting such an elusive and difficult text as this Pauline letter.11 By contrast, the reception-historical analysis offered here has confirmed the contrary contention of Judith Kovacs and Christopher Rowland; namely, that 6

Luz 1994: 31. Roberts and Rowland 2010: 132. On the terms ‘diachronic’ and ‘synchronic’, see Rowland 2009: 290–1. 8
kland 2009: 20. 9 Luz 1989: 96; see also Luz 1994: 26. 10 Brown 1999 and 2000. 11 Riches 2008: 2–5. 7

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the (verse by verse) commentary might actually impose severe limitations on the interpretation of the Book of Revelation, which is equally, although in a very different manner to Galatians, elusive and difficult.12 Visionaries, contemplative monks, artists, and poets might offer more insightful interpretations of and engagement with this symbolic and visionary book than scholarly tomes which attempt an exegesis of every verse or every word.

REVISITING THE ‘POTENTIAL OF THE TEXT ’ The initial survey of the ‘potential of the text’ in Chapter 1 identified the following six possibilities which are considered rarely, and in some cases not at all, in modern critical commentaries: 1. The relationship between ‘I, John’ and other Jewish and early Christian prophetic call narratives and accounts of visionary experience; 2. The significance of John being on an ‘island’, inviting comparison both with the marginal ‘islands of the nations’ in the biblical tradition, and with the classical concept of the islands, especially that of the sacred island; 3. Closer attention to the name ‘Patmos’, whether as part of a geographical landscape (which given Jewish apocalyptic antecedents might be as much mythical as literal) or as a symbolic name (taking its cue from Revelation’s non-literal treatment of other place-names, or alternatively its strategy of using gematria for interpreting names); 4. Exploitation of the ambiguous ‘on account of the word of God’, etc. in Rev. 1:9, particularly in the light of Rev. 1:2 which interprets ‘the word of God and the testimony of Jesus’ as all that John saw; i.e. his apocalyptic visions; 5. The possibility that Rev. 1:9–20 is a Temple vision of the heavenly high priest, inviting associations between Patmos and Jerusalem, and (through speculation on that Temple in Second Temple Judaism) the Garden of Eden; 6. The potential for understanding Patmos as the narrative setting for other visionary passages, thus treating it as a heuristic lens through which the text as a whole might be viewed. These aspects highlight the complexity of what might appear, at least superficially, a straightforward biblical text, which makes it all the more difficult (pace 12

Kovacs and Rowland 2004: 11–12.

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many modern commentators) to identify a single, unambiguous ‘original meaning’ for this passage.13 Though often neglected by modern commentators, most if not all have been encountered in the survey of material in Chapters 2 to 7. Examples of each of these six aspects will now be summarized in turn.

Treatment in Past Interpreters First, a number of pre-1900 interpreters have recognized the significance of earlier visionary narratives as a hermeneutical lens for understanding Revelation. Hippolytus implies a relationship between John and prophet-exiles such as Daniel, while the early Franciscan commentary Vox Domini acknowledges the hermeneutical significance of Ezekiel’s vision. Perhaps the most sustained example is the typological relationship set up in the Prochorus Acts and certain Byzantine exegetes between Patmos and Sinai, although we also find the interpretation of Patmos as a new Bethel, the place of Jacob’s ladder in Vidit Iacob (which extends the typology to incorporate other aspects of the Jacob narrative), and equally potent associations with the stories of Moses at the burning bush, Elijah on Mount Horeb, and Stephen witnessing heaven opened (Viegas and à Lapide). Second, greater attention is paid in earlier commentators to the concept of ‘island’, and to its significance within the wider biblical tradition. Examples vary from consideration of the insularity of Patmos and its supposed barren and isolated character (an element in the reception history which particularly influenced modern commentators, despite its historical implausibility), through interest in the status of Patmos as a ‘liminal place’, to acknowledgement of the biblical association of ‘the islands’ with the nations. Examples of emphasis on the liminality of Patmos include Primasius and Bede, for whom it functions as the terrestrial gateway providing unrestricted access to the heavenly realm, despite the geographical limitations imposed by its insularity, and its location in proximity to insula Tylis ‘on the edge’ of the known world (whether in the far north, or beyond human access as the island closest to the earthly Paradise) in the Anglo-Norman Apocalypses. The fact that the Old Testament identifies the islands with the Gentiles inspired Christopher Columbus in his eschatologically motivated explorations in the New World, finds visual expression in Hans Burgkmair’s altarpiece, and influences the commentaries of Matthaeus Cotterius and Edward Waple. The one aspect of ‘insularity’ highlighted in Chapter 1 which does not seem to feature, at least positively, in the history of reception is the classical concept of the ‘sacred island’ (at least until Hölderlin presented Patmos as the meeting 13

See Kovacs and Rowland 2004: 248.

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point of the Greek and Christian worlds). The rare acknowledgement of the island’s ancient title as the island of Artemis is negative; as in the claim that Christodoulos built his monastery on the site of the temple of Artemis, and destroyed her cult statue. Moreover, while there is frequent appeal, especially among Catholic and Orthodox interpreters, to the character of Patmos as holy place, this is entirely related to its role in Christian history, rather than an appreciation of pagan antecedents such as Apollo’s Delos.14 Third, attention to the name of Patmos is widely attested in the history of reception. In many cases, particularly in the early modern period, it is treated as important for locating the island geographically. This largely confirms the consensus of modern commentators that Patmos is a small island in the Sporades, known by the Venetians as Palmosa and more recently as Patino (although hints of an alternative location in the eastern Mediterranean are found in Ethiopic traditions, whilst there are also suggestions, particularly in visual exegesis, that Patmos is part of a mythic or symbolic geography appropriate to a visionary text, as comparison with apocalypses such as 1 Enoch might suggest). However, a significant number of interpreters, from the early Middle Ages onwards, exploit alternative strategies proposed in the Apocalypse itself (thus making it difficult to rule their readings out as exegetically unfounded). The first strategy is to interpret the name Patmos ‘allegorically’ (Rev. 11:8), or, if the treatment of ‘Babylon’ in Rev. 17 is taken into consideration, to allow ‘Patmos’ to function in a more analogical fashion as a cipher for a particular kind of situation or location, providing an interpretative key to the interpreter’s own circumstances. Examples of an allegorical interpretation include Jean Hardouin’s identification of ‘Patmos’ as a code for Judaea, albeit one which has a basis in Hebrew etymology.15 Analogical treatments of Patmos, and of the word insula, regularly emphasize their potential as symbols for the monastic life in subsequent generations, while not denying the text’s primary reference to a location within the story of John. Explicit examples of actualization (e.g. Luther’s identification of the Wartburg as ‘my Patmos’) could be categorized as part of this group. The second strategy is to consider the numerical value of the name, an approach advocated by the invitation to ‘calculate the number of the beast’ at Rev. 13:17–18. One clear example of this strategy is the widespread medieval interpretation of Patmos as fretum and the less well-attested fervor (both sharing with Patmos the numerical value of 79), although the move to 14 Even the reference to Delos in the poem by William Lisle Bowles functions to contrast the pagan environment of the first century Mediterranean with John’s visionary sight, enabling him to see the distant (both geographically and chronologically) Christian world which will replace it: Bowles 1832: 125–9. 15 Non-allegorical uses of etymology are also found, as in Samuel Bochart’s claim that the name derives from the word ‘terebinth’.

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establishing a gematrial link is probably dependent upon a prior quest for symbolic associations between Patmos as an island in the midst of the sea and appropriate Latin words associated with ‘the sea’ or ‘water’. Fourth, explanations of the phrase Øa e ºª  F Ł F ŒÆd c Ææ ıæÆ
Å F, although also a key issue for post-1900 critical commentators, are much more diverse amongst earlier interpreters. Whilst some of these certainly involve creative leaps beyond what might plausibly be regarded as the meaning implied by the human author,16 this is not the case for all. What the variety does suggest, rather, is that greater exegetical subtlety is called for than many modern critical commentaries appreciate, a recognition of the elusive manner in which John describes his presence on the island. Certainly there are commentators who insist on exile or banishment as the exclusive reason for John’s sojourn on Patmos (particularly from the Reformation onwards), and this is also the dominant view in the early period. However, personal circumstances are also relevant here in clarifying why such an explanation established itself as the ‘consensus’ view, as noted in the case of Victorinus and Tertullian, writing in the face of actual Roman persecution, and also of several exiled Protestant commentators from the 16th century. Yet alternative views are also well attested in the history of reception, including the view that John went to Patmos as a consequence of flight rather than externally-enforced exile (found in J. Napier, followed by King James I). Moreover, many so-called ‘pre-critical’ commentators eschew the temptation of their ‘critical’ successors to treat the various options as mutually exclusive. Often the issue is rather one of emphasis. Thus those who prioritize the visionary potential of John’s location on Patmos are not necessarily denying that he arrived there as a consequence of banishment or exile, nor do those who prefer the latter rule out missionary activity by John on Patmos. The Victoria and Albert Museum’s altarpiece from the workshop of Master Bertram is one striking visual example which sees no contradiction between banishment, preaching, and reception of visions, even presenting all three aspects in a single visual frame. One possibility which is not explored by critical commentators, but which exercises the minds of at least some earlier readers, is that the hand of God might be more determinative for the author of Revelation than the hand of the emperor in Rome or the proconsul in Ephesus (as in the Acts of John in Rome, or the commentary of Cassiodorus with its claim that John was exiled feliciter, ‘auspiciously’ or ‘happily’ to Patmos). Given the theological character of the Apocalypse, this is not a reading which can be readily dismissed even by those whose primary concern is to establish what the human author intended to convey.

16

Although readers may vary enormously as to what they might imagine to be ‘plausible’.

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Fifth, an association between Patmos and the Temple, implied in the text by the vision of a high-priestly Son of Man in the midst of seven menorahs, is also present in the reception history of this passage, if not as widespread as one might expect (although it may be implicit in the general acceptance that Patmos has become a sacred place as a consequence of the vision received there). At least two clear examples have been found, however, both from Catholic exegetes. Peter Bulengerus envisages the vision ‘on the Lord’s Day’ as precipitated by John’s pouring out prayers in his desert island velut in templo, while John Hardouin’s etymological identification of Patmos as the place of an ‘unclean face’ connects it exegetically with Isaiah’s own Temple vision (Isa. 6). Somewhat differently, and representing an Orthodox reading, the illustration to Rev. 14:1–5 in the Elizabeth Day McCormick Apocalypse exploits the potential of Patmos as narrative setting for several of Revelation’s visions by locating Mount Sion on the island (indicated by John’s tell-tale cave at the foot of the sacred mountain). This example connects with the final aspect of the text’s potential identified in Chapter 1: the possibility that the reader is to locate other scenes from the book on Patmos. The Elizabeth Day McCormick manuscript connects the Patmos cave with several further visions, including that of the new Jerusalem. The scene of the mighty angel and John devouring the scroll (Rev. 10) is related to Patmos, and its aftermath, in several interpreters. It is the one place in Victorinus’s commentary where Patmos is mentioned, as the location for what John saw, while confined to working in the mines. Hippolytus connects the preaching (and writing) of the Gospel to the commission to ‘prophesy again’ received at this point, a feature later attested in Martin of Leon and Peter of Tarantaise. Visually, Patmos features in Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut of this scene.

Further Issues in the Reception History Nor are these six aspects of the ‘potential of the text’, identified in Chapter 1, the only features encountered in the reception-historical survey offered in this book. The relationship between John’s Patmos vision and what John ‘saw’ while on the Lord’s breast at the Last Supper is explored as early as Primasius, developed by Bede, and popularized in the Latin West through liturgical and homiletic usage. It may also underlie the otherwise puzzling two-sided panel of Hieronymus Bosch. While this interpretation presupposes common authorship of Revelation and the Fourth Gospel (a position few scholars would now wish to hold), it should not too readily be dismissed on those grounds alone. For even if the identity of the two Johns is more imaginary than historical, at least some of the Apocalypse’s visions seem to make an analogous claim to unveil—albeit in a

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visionary form wholly different to that of the canonical gospels—the theological significance of Christ’s Passion, death, and resurrection. The visions of the slaughtered Lamb in Rev. 5 and the birth of the male child in Rev. 12 are perhaps the most striking examples, though the Divine Warrior of Rev. 19 may be another, whilst sayings echoing those of the Jesus of the gospels (both synoptic and Johannine) permeate the text (e.g. Rev. 2:7, 27–28; 3:4; 16:15; 22:17). Ecclesial interpretations, not only of the Apocalypse in general (a feature of Tyconian-Augustinian exegesis) but of Patmos in particular, are widespread throughout the history of the text’s reception. Sometimes these stress the exemplary character of the passage (as in Bruno of Segni’s appeal to a relationship of solidarity between the Church and the exile of Patmos) rather than being strictly allegorical. In the case of Bede, the interpretation of the devouring of the scroll in Rev. 10 surprisingly gives precedence to an ecclesial interpretation (John on Patmos as all Christians) over against a historical one in which John eats the scroll as an individual character. Sometimes, the ecclesial dimension involves a figurative treatment of the word insula as an allegory of the Church, storm-tossed by persecution and difficulties. There is also the more focused interpretation whereby Patmos symbolizes a specific state in life, especially the monastic (as in Christodoulos and Joachim of Fiore). While these are non-literal readings, removed somewhat from the probable original sense(s), they have some justification in John’s familial selfdesignation as ‘your brother’ vis-à-vis the seven churches, understood as a symbol of the universal Church.17 The legitimacy of a monastic appropriation is further enhanced by appeal to the solitary, insular character of Patmos, and prioritization of its status as locus visionis.

DIFFERENT PATTERNS OF INTERPRETATION In the introduction to this monograph, the methodology for organizing interpretations into a reception-historical narrative was outlined. The initial approach was to locate the different readings in a broad chronological framework, subdividing where appropriate according to geographical location (thus Eastern interpretations from the 5th/6th century onwards were treated separately from Western ones, and similar geographical distinctions were made in Chapter 7). This arrangement facilitated attention to historical and cultural

On the question of whether there is only one ‘original sense’ or a plurality of ‘original senses’, see Roberts 2011: 4. 17

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context on the part of individual interpreters (hence a strictly synchronic approach), although in-depth biographical considerations were mainly reserved for the more unusual interpretations. Secondly, attention was paid to certain or probable ‘genealogical relationships’ between interpretations in different periods, and occasionally in different places (e.g. the impact of German Apocalypse woodcuts on Greek Orthodox wall-paintings on Mount Athos). This diachronic process was also facilitated by the broad chronological framework. A third stage was more analogical: an attempt to juxtapose similar types of interpretations within the individual chapters of the book. This was not always straightforward. It was hampered for the patristic and early medieval periods, for example, by lack of consistency amongst exegetes (both ancient and modern) in defining terms such as ‘spiritual’ as opposed to ‘literal’ exegesis, ‘typology’ (a modern term approximating to what the Greeks called   and the Latins figura) and ‘allegory’. Particularly helpful in categorization were the interpretative axes proposed by Judith Kovacs and Christopher Rowland in their Blackwell commentary on Revelation, primarily the axis which presents allegory or ‘decoding’ on the one hand, and actualization (in its two forms) or analogy on the other, as the two poles.18 Given the subject matter of Rev. 1:9, the second axis was less useful. According to this axis, interpretations are categorized according to their emphasis upon past, present, or future. Almost all readings of Rev. 1:9 would locate the emphasis on the past of John’s Patmos experience, a focus urged by the text’s use of the aorist KªÅ. Occasionally one finds a present emphasis, as in Luther’s actualization; more rarely, Patmos may be given future significance, as in Hans Burgkmair’s portrayal of an Eden-like landscape visualizing the new world which is beginning to dawn. Even in these cases, however, the interpretation presupposes a prior reference to a past situation involving John the seer. Similarly, terminology regularly used by critical scholars to distinguish different readings of the Apocalypse (preterist, historicist, futurist, and idealist), or those which dominate in more popular Christian interpretations (e.g. pre-millennial, post-millennial, a-millennial) were less than helpful. The first set generally describes interpretations of Revelation as a whole, especially the visionary material, whereas the description of Patmos generally stands outside this frame.19 The second group of labels prioritizes another passage of the Apocalypse entirely: the description of the ‘millennium’ in Rev. 20.

18 Kovacs and Rowland 2004: 8–10; for a preference for the language of ‘analogy’, see Rowland 2009: 299. 19 Kovacs and Rowland 2004: 11.

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Distinguishing Patterns of Interpretation A broad categorization of the various interpretations discovered allows the identification of at least three different hermeneutical strategies, or perhaps better emphases (an acknowledgement that allegory and analogy represent opposite poles on a spectrum): the literal, the allegorical, and the analogical (including particular examples which might be better described as ‘actualizations’ in the narrower sense Rowland now prefers: ‘attempts to act out apocalyptic images’).20 The literal sense remains fundamental even for those interpreters who engage in more creative readings of Patmos, approximating to, if not always exactly the same as, the historical-critical concern for establishing original meaning or authorial intention. But attention to reception history has revealed how uncertain the literal sense of this open-ended text really is, even at Rev. 1:9 which is arguably the most ‘literal’ part of the Apocalypse (in the sense that for most interpreters it describes the ‘history’ of John prior to the symbolic visions).21 Historical uncertainty remains over the reason why John was on Patmos, the character of the exile for those who regard this as the most plausible explanation, and whether this rules out missionary and visionary dimensions, and its date (whether under Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, in the aftermath of Nero’s death, at the end of the reign of Domitian as traditional readings prefer, or in the later reigns of Trajan or Hadrian). Despite lack of attention to this in modern criticism, the concept of ‘insularity’ is also relevant for establishing the literal sense, while juxtaposition of the Apocalypse with other contemporary apocalyptic texts suggests that a more symbolic or mythic understanding of geography might be relevant for understanding what John wished to convey to his original audiences. Moreover, the visionary character of Revelation, and the possibility that John believed he was communicating the content of what he received rather than consciously reflecting on its significance, requires a somewhat different concept of authorial intention than does the interpretation of a Pauline letter or a gospel. The ambiguity of the literal sense extends to understanding the figure of John on Patmos. He is regularly seen as exile, although this is sometimes combined with his role as ‘martyr’ (albeit without actual death, and connecting the Patmos experience to the previous boiling oil episode in Rome); but he is also viewed as prophet, as well as visionary and missioner. Focus can be on his role as author, or as mediator of the heavenly world to his earthly audiences or viewers. Building on passages such as Rev. 4:1 and 10:8, John is also protagonist within the visions he describes. Patmos thereby functions

20

Rowland 2009: 299.

21

See Rowland 2009: 294.

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variously as place of confinement, of evangelistic potential, of scriptural composition, or as gateway to an expansive celestial world. None of these could be easily dismissed as ‘misreadings’ of Revelation, even on the level of the literal sense, or the more specific concern for original meaning. Even the clearly fictional letter of Dionysius the Areopagite bears a high degree of verisimilitude in its locating John’s apocalyptic circular letter within an ongoing corpus of two-way correspondence between the exile and the churches, even if its primary function lies elsewhere (whether to bolster the fiction that the author is Paul’s convert of Athens, or to offer reassurance to persecuted marginal Christians in early 6th-century Syria). Given the ‘historical’ character of Revelation’s reference to Patmos, examples of allegorical interpretation or ‘decoding’ are less frequent than in interpretations of visionary sections such as the seven seals. Nevertheless, there are some examples. Most obvious is Hardouin’s claim that ‘Patmos’ is a code for ‘Judaea’, but the medieval interpretation of insula as a symbol of the Church is another example. Patmos as ‘place of forgiveness’ or ‘place of vision’ in Ethiopic traditions, and the widespread Latin interpretation of Patmos as fretum are also interpretations closer to the allegorical than analogical pole, even if they may have an etymological foundation. These should probably be regarded as secondary interpretations of the text. Nevertheless, they cannot be dismissed as purely arbitrary and unscientific interpretations, given that they pick up on at least two strategies encouraged by the biblical text. The first is the explicit statement in parts of the book that an element of decoding is required (e.g. Rev. 1:20; 17:7–12), albeit against the more allusive thrust of the whole. The second is the claim that place-names have symbolic significance (Rev. 11:8). In this sense, these interpretations may fulfil one of two initial criteria proposed by Ulrich Luz, that of ‘correspondence with the original meaning’.22 Analogical interpretations of Patmos are more widespread, as well as more diverse. Some of these are exemplary, including those which medieval exegetes would have described as tropological or moral; e.g. the comparison of Patmos as island to the soul of the just man in Aser pinguis, as well as most ecclesial readings which connect John ‘your brother’ with the situation of Christians in successive ages. (The fact that a particular example of an ecclesial interpretation has been classified above as allegorical is a reminder that we are speaking of a spectrum rather than self-contained categories.) Those readings which make connections between Patmos and the monastic life are also analogical in seeing a ‘fit’ between the isolation of John’s Patmos (as historically imagined) and the isolated contemplative life of monks and hermits.

22

Luz 1994: 70–3.

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Some are more dramatic, as in those examples of actualization in which particular images are ‘acted out’ or John’s vision is ‘seen again’ in new circumstances. Among the most significant examples are those of St Francis (as understood by the ‘Alexander’ commentary) and Martin Luther. Finally, typological readings (such as the juxtaposition of Patmos and Bethel in Vidit Iacob, and the relationship established between John’s Patmos cave and Elijah’s cave in Orthodox icons) may be classified as analogical rather than allegorical in that they juxtapose two narratives which exist in their own right rather than claim that the one is a coded reference to the other.

Patmos in the Prochorus Acts The Prochorus Acts have been chosen as an illustration of how all this might work, and of how earlier interpreters saw no difficulty in utilizing different types of interpretation simultaneously. This 5th-century text could justly be categorized as an engagement with, and expansion of, the literal sense, filling in the gaps of the minimal historical information the Apocalypse provides. Yet the result is an extreme example of imaginative ‘fiction’, which might be regarded as a misreading of the text if a narrow concept of historical truth is the determinative criterion for assessing the legitimacy of interpretations. The Prochorus Acts locate John in an implausibly large island, with distances between towns suggesting an imagined Patmos the size of Sicily or Cyprus,23 at an improbably late date (in the reigns of either Trajan or Hadrian), and with a large cast of actors (many identified by name) including Roman officials, pagan priests, and would-be Christian converts, none of whom are suggested explicitly by the biblical text. Moreover, the written text is but a stable textual version (the existence of a second, expanded edition notwithstanding) of a set of narratives which continue to flourish in more fluid oral form, and which are interwoven on Patmos itself with ‘physical artefacts’, such as two baptismal sites, the cave of the magician Kynops, and John’s own Cave of the Apocalypse with a niche where the elderly apostle laid his head, a ledge at which Prochorus stood to transcribe the text of Revelation, and a threefold split in the rock at the cave’s entrance caused, so legend has it, by the voice of the Trinity. However, even in terms of historical plausibility some qualification is called for. The general point is that the biblical text is so brief and ambiguous about the circumstances of John’s stay on Patmos that it invites imaginative expansion. More specifically, as noted in Chapter 5, although date and geographical size are historically implausible, other features of the narrative have greater 23

So Zahn 1880: lii.

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verisimilitude than aspects of the Western alternative regularly adopted by historical critics: the fact that Patmos is portrayed as a vibrant centre of population, for example, with its own imperial officials and thriving pagan cults including that of Apollo. Equally plausible is the apostle’s engagement in missionary activity, even though the narrative theme of Christianity’s victory over paganism and magic betrays the text’s post-Constantinian context. If Patmos did indeed have a sizeable population in John’s day, as inscriptional and archaeological evidence suggests, it is highly likely that the exiled John would have sought to make converts from among his contemporaries. Furthermore, the Apocalypse shares with the Prochorus Acts an antipathy towards idolaters and magicians, both explicitly mentioned among the categories of people who have a share in the lake of fire (Rev. 21:8). In terms of the hermeneutical strategy employed by the author(s), the Prochorus Acts are more than imaginative expansion for the purpose of entertainment. Certainly it was the case that earlier sets of apocryphal Acts such as the original Acts of John flourished during the heyday of the romantic novel (see section on Acts of John in Chapter 2), and it is quite likely that this later 5th-century example also had popular appeal. However, there is more to be said. First, following David Brown, we should allow the possibility that ‘fictional’ narratives might convey the significance of the protagonist, whether Christ or a saint, more effectively than a narrative which is judged historically true.24 In the case of John, whether as visionary, pastor or perpetuator of Christ’s healing ministry, what he signifies within the Church (both early and contemporary) may be better expressed by the fictional elaboration of the Prochorus Acts. Moreover, there may also be an exemplary or imitative dimension, expressed particularly through his stout defence of the Christian faith before the priests of Apollo, and through the communal aspect of the narrative in its imagining a fledgling Christian community on Patmos, both connecting with the ecclesial experience of contemporary readers. Second, the Prochorus Acts also exemplify a typological interpretation, although one which juxtaposes John rather than Christ with the Old Testament narrative. Patmos becomes a new Sinai in the shaking of the mountain, to which is added Elijah’s Horeb (Sinai’s alter ego) in the expanded version which includes a description of the writing of the Apocalypse. The result is a fresh reading whereby John inherits the mantle of both Moses and Elijah, and their respective revelations become a paradigm for John’s own, even as it supersedes them. Thus it is a form of analogical interpretation, but one which would be dismissed as illegitimate by most historical critics.

24

Brown 2000: 353–67 (on p. 362 he gives the example of the miracle at Cana to illustrate his point).

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Yet again, the biblical text suggests otherwise. First, the Apocalypse has already begun the process by presenting the character of John in terms which are both Mosaic and Elijanic (both in his opposition to ‘Jezebel’ and ‘Balaam’ in the seven churches and in his connection to the paradigmatic prophetwitnesses of Rev. 11). This is further extended, in the case of the Sinai revelation, by Revelation’s epilogue, in which the authority of John’s book is safeguarded in words borrowed from Moses in Deuteronomy (Rev. 22:18–19; Deut. 4:2). Therefore, although the shaking of the mountain, or the dictation in a cave on Patmos, are almost certainly fictional elaborations, what they signify is no more than an extension of what the text already conveys about the divine authority of the revelation, the mediatory role of its recipient, and the consequent significance of the place of reception. The latter point is especially pertinent. Both the written Prochorus Acts and the more fluid but related oral traditions highlight the theological significance of place, by presenting the island as a whole, and specific locations within its boundaries, as sacred.25 This is a recurring element in the history of reception, attested to in both East and West, and attention to such readings invites a reassessment of its relative neglect in contemporary scholarly treatments of Patmos. It is reflected in portrayals of Patmos as privileged locus of divine revelation or (more transcendently, as in the commentaries of Primasius and Bede) as the gateway to celestial mysteries. The establishment of Patmos monastery by Christodoulos is rooted in the conviction that this specific locale has become a holy island, making its suitability for hesychastic practice all the greater. It is true that the attitude to place is not consistent amongst interpreters. Among 16th-century interpreters, for example, we find a Catholic/Protestant divide. Whilst Catholic exegetes extol the virtues of solitary Patmos as a model for Christian, especially monastic solitude and contemplation, as if particular places are more fully charged with divine glory, a Protestant such as William Fulke is anxious to uphold the capacity of ‘the baseness or deformitie of anye place’ to be ‘drawne up into secretes of the heuenly glory’.26 The Protestant emphasis seems to be that any place can be sanctified by the divine presence, the Catholic that particular places which have been so sanctified (such as the hitherto undistinguished Patmos) are to be treated with veneration appropriate to their sacramental character. Whatever the differences between interpreters, there would appear to be a general agreement that significance is to be attributed to an island such as Patmos (whether that be permanent or temporary) as a consequence of what occurred there. The text’s evoking of the architecture and personnel of the 25 Recent attempts to re-establish the theological significance of place include Sheldrake 2001; Inge 2003; Brown 2004. 26 Fulke 1573: 4.

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Temple in John’s inaugural vision (Rev. 1:9–20) makes this explicit: Patmos has become, or has been revealed as, a holy place. This is the essence of what Walter Brueggemann calls ‘storied place’.27 Similarly, John Inge identifies particular places of vision or revelation, invested with significance as a consequence of ‘sacramental events’ which have taken place there: Paul’s Damascus Road experience, Constantine’s encounter at the Milvian Bridge, St Francis’s vision at San Damiano, and John Wesley’s ‘conversion’ in Aldersgate Street.28 To this list we might add the classic biblical places of revelation: Moses on Sinai, Elijah at his cave on Horeb, Daniel by the Tigris, and Ezekiel beside the Chebar. However, although what happened to John on Patmos is the basis for attributing sacral significance to the island in the history of reception, rather than the island possessing sanctity in its own right, that may not be all to be said. The pre-Johannine reception of Patmos as the island sacred to Artemis, although this is likely to have been anathema to a monotheistic JewishChristian prophet like John, should perhaps not be so readily excluded from consideration of the sacred dimension to this island. In our very different world, contemporary commentators may be more willing in principle than their predecessors to attribute divine activity to locations associated with pagan worship and practice, thus considering the possibility that the Christian appropriation of Patmos builds upon an already existing tradition of sacred place.

PROSPECTIVE: WIDER IMPLICATIONS O F T H E P R E S E N T S TU D Y Thinking prospectively, what might be the implications of the findings of this book for ongoing interpretation of the Apocalypse, and for New Testament study more broadly? I will begin with the broad question, including the ways in which the concerns of this monograph mesh with current scholarly trends, moving from that to narrower repercussions for scholarly study of the Book of Revelation.

The Role of the Imagination A recurring theme throughout this book has been the place of the imagination in New Testament study. The ambiguities surrounding Revelation’s reference 27

Brueggemann 1978: 187.

28

Inge 2003: 68–70.

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to Patmos have perhaps accentuated the imaginative aspect in the history of reception: Patmos has been imagined as a bleak solitary island appropriate for monastic contemplation (in the words of Oecumenius ‘small and desolate’), as Victorinus’s place of hard labour in the mines, or alternatively as the expansive world of human population in the Prochorus Acts, or an island of connectivity with the mainland, whether by regular visits from seven ‘angels’ or ambassadors of the seven churches, or by an exchange of letters with Dionysius the Areopagite. David Brown offers a robust defence of the use of the imagination as a complementary means of access to the truth alongside historical research.29 He reminds us that there are other kinds of truth besides the ‘historical’, and these include ‘truths of the imagination’. It is often through the imagination that fresh insights into the meaning of the text, or striking developments in the tradition, can occur. Yet one should be careful not to draw too sharp a distinction here from what occurs in historical criticism. Use of the imagination may be more striking in ‘pre-critical’ readings (whether the letter to Patmos of PseudoDionysius, the relocation of John to a cave with a disciple in the expanded Prochorus Acts, or the rediscovery of Eden in Hans Burgkmair). However, the process at work is not qualitatively different from Robert Mounce’s statement that ‘[a]pparently the Asian authorities had interpreted his preaching as seditious and removed him from the mainland in an attempt to inhibit the growth of the early church’, Allan Boesak’s description of Patmos as ‘the infamous island, place of banishment, place of punishment, place of lonely wanderings’ which ‘became a place of learning, of seeing, of understanding, . . . a place of revelation, of discovery, of empowerment’, or the rather dismissive claim of Ben Witherington III that ‘Patmos was indeed no prize to live on’.30 In other words, reception history draws attention to the fundamental role of the imagination, and imaginative reconstruction, in finding meaning in texts.31 Cultural factors, and inherited readings, may affect what a particular interpreter considers possible to imagine. But the use of the imagination is not a strategy which ceased with the emergence of the historical-critical method, as revealed in recent reconstructions of gospel ‘communities’ which depend upon the imaginative capacities of their proponents for their potential to illuminate the text.32 Recognition of this by contemporary scholarship may enable a fresh appreciation of the role of the imagination in medieval exegesis

29 30 31 32

Brown 1999: 58; 2000: 353–67. Mounce 1977: 75; Boesak 1987: 41; Witherington 2003: 9. Roberts and Rowland 2008: 42; Lyons 2010: 216. E.g. on the Fourth Gospel, Brown 1979; Ashton 1991.

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(known there as ‘memory’, memoria), a process explored in considerable detail by Mary Carruthers.33

Participation A second transferable feature of this study is the centrality granted to engagement and participation, a theme which echoes wider debates in biblical scholarship over the relationship between biblical exegesis and ecclesial and other reading communities,34 and the widespread critique of supposedly ‘disinterested’ exegesis. In his discussion of Wirkungsgeschichte in his 1994 Matthew in History, Ulrich Luz follows Walter Wink in lamenting the fact that historical criticism ‘has a tendency to cut the exegete off from the living community’.35 By contrast, many of the examples discovered in the reception history of the Apocalypse invite participation, rooted in an understanding of the theological subject matter of the text, and attending to its prophetic call to ‘listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches’. The interpretations of patristic authors facing Roman persecution, or Protestants exiled by another Rome, are engaged, transformative readings, not least because of the analogous state of the interpreters to that of John (at least in one of the possible imaginative accounts of his presence on Patmos). Wider ecclesial interpretations, no longer tied to concrete situations of persecution, also invite participation on the part of the Church, whether providing consolation in the face of more general trials, or encouraging groups of Christians to emulate the seer of Patmos in contemplative prayer. Unsurprisingly, artists encourage connectivity between viewers and the narrative of Patmos, as in the possibility of sharing, albeit vicariously, in John’s transformative pilgrimage via contemplating the images of the Trinity Apocalypse, meditating on Bosch’s mysterious hill of Patmos while being fed by the Divine Pelican at the Mass celebrated before his altarpiece, or seeing in Botticelli’s harsh and foreboding Patmos a reflection of the situation of Florence in the last decade of the 15th century. Such participation poses a stark question to exegetes open to what John Barton and John Muddiman have called ‘chastened historical criticism’:36 should the purpose of New Testament interpretation be to provide only information, or should it also be aimed at transformation? An affirmative

33 34 35 36

Carruthers 1998 and 2008. E.g. Johnson and Kurz 2002; Davis and Hays (eds) 2003. Luz 1994: 8. Barton and Muddiman (eds) 2001: 1–3.

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answer to the latter may be reflected in the renewed scholarly interest in patristic and medieval patterns of exegesis, reflected not only in the Blackwell Bible Commentaries and the SCM Theological Commentary, but in series such as the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture and The Church’s Bible. This in turn has bibliographical implications: what is the justification, in much critical scholarship, for treating the late 18th century as the terminus a quo for bibliographical material, or even (as in the case of several recent commentaries on Revelation) 1904? A remedy to the corporate scholarly amnesia surrounding earlier biblical interpretation, with its many rich exegetical possibilities, may be a conscious decision by commentators to engage with texts also from the 16th and 17th centuries, or even from the 8th or the 4th.

Interpretation and Meaning A third area of relevance concerns the quest for meaning within the text, which relates especially to the task of the New Testament commentator. One of the criticisms made in this monograph of the historical-critical treatment of Patmos is that it so often gets sidetracked into prolegomena: questions of identity, origins, and geographical location. Patmos is considered in order to ask questions about the author who inhabits it and why he does so, or to place it on a recognizable terrestrial map. There is little direct consideration of what Patmos might mean, in the sense of its significance within the text and for readers of the text (whether as island, as place with a significant name, or as locus visionis whose meaning may be illuminated by treating similar apocalyptic texts not simply as ‘parallels’ but as interpretative keys). This fascination in the commentaries with background issues imposes severe restrictions even on the historical-critical concern to understand what the text meant. Ironically, it is the study of reception history which alerts the historical critic to more central concerns. Related to this is the question of multivalency: must a text only mean one thing? Even an ancient author has the capacity to be deliberately ambiguous, and earlier interpreters have generally been more willing to live with such ambiguities. Moreover, for those less sure that authorial intention may be reconstructed, or that it determines understanding, the space offered by the text’s uncertainties offers rich potential for re-readings of the text in the new circumstances encountered by readers in each generation and cultural context, in situations of both crisis and relative calm, and inhabiting quite different states in life.

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Implications for Study of the Book of Revelation But given the subject matter, this book has particular implications for the scholarly interpretation of the Apocalypse, extending beyond the specific contribution of its reception-historical survey and catalogue. At the outset, it is important to acknowledge the unusual character of the Book of Revelation amongst the New Testament writings. Its visionary quality, both allusive and elusive, means that it is less overtly ‘historical’ than other texts, and its relationship to authorial intention is thereby rather more complex. As has been discovered, this impacts even on the passage which has been the subject of this reception-historical study, despite it being regarded as the most ‘historical’ or ‘biographical’ passage in the book, outside the main ‘visionary frame’. The first implication for future Apocalypse interpretation is the recognition that certain widely used interpretative grids are not appropriate to every passage. Thus the common division of interpretations of the Apocalypse into preterist, historicist, futurist, and idealist are not particularly helpful in differentiating between varying interpretations of Patmos. This is borne out by Steve Gregg’s parallel commentary on Revelation, where the different approaches considered reveal no significant difference in their interpretation of Rev. 1:9.37 Even less useful are those alternative labels, widespread in popular evangelical circles, which describe a particular stance towards the millennial reign of Christ. This monograph has borne out the contention of Kovacs and Rowland that an additional hermeneutical axis is required; indeed, this was found to be a valuable heuristic device in articulating some of the differences more clearly. Second, the prominence given to Patmos by earlier interpreters, and its treatment as location for several visions including those of Rev. 10 and Rev. 21–22, points to Patmos having a potential function as interpretative key to the whole text. This orienting role is often given in modern scholarship to the vision of the heavenly throne-room (Rev. 4–5 and passim). Alternatively, the septets are accorded an important role in analyses of the book’s structure. The findings of this study suggest the fruitfulness of treating Patmos as a key location, or symbolizing a particular perspective through which to interpret the heavenly visions. Third, the exploration of the reception history of a particular passage offered here has attempted to open up dimensions to the text which have been neglected, or even unseen, by recent commentators. It is hoped that at least some of the implications of these will filter through to subsequent scholarship in considering the significance of Patmos both for John and for the interpretation of his text.

37

Gregg (ed.) 1997: 58.

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One specific example is the scholarly consensus on John as an exile and victim of imperial persecution, certainly a compelling reading of the text. Within the history of reception, this reading has often gone hand-in-hand with an engagement on the part of interpreters with the actuality of persecution and exile at the hands of the authorities, and reflected an overall interpretation of Revelation as a book for martyrs. This was particularly the case with patristic authors facing imperial persecution, and exiled Protestants escaping the wrath of later papal Rome. Ironically, the recent shift in Revelation studies away from Domitianic persecution as the historical background to Revelation38 has the potential to undermine the consensus which treats the exile explanation as the original sense of the text. It might need to be reinstated instead, alongside alternative reconstructions, as a secondary re-reading of the text for those whose own situation is different from John’s, though anticipated in his visions of future persecution and martyrdom. This would not necessarily represent an illegitimate reading, but an actualization in new circumstances,39 by those who have taken seriously the Apocalypse’s prophetic call to the churches to resist the beast even to the point of shedding their blood. Finally, it is hoped that this book will serve as a foundation and springboard for future more detailed research into the impact of Patmos in the Apocalypse’s reception history. Although what is offered here is in no way exhaustive, its breadth has ensured that a wide range of diverse readings have been collated and analysed, and hints made as to how some of these might be taken further. Equally, as an initial and provisional contribution to knowledge in this area, it is intended to encourage other scholars to engage in reception-historical ‘diving’, to discover more of that large percentage of the iceberg currently submerged below the surface of the ‘waves of history’.40

38 40

E.g. Thompson 1990. Bockmuehl 1995: 66.

39

See Brown 1999: 71.

APPENDIX 1

Patmos in Modern Commentators Reason for Presence on Patmos Exile/banishment Swete 1909; Ratton 1912; Beckwith 1919; Charles 1920; Allo 1921; Loisy 1923; Kiddle 1940; Behm 1949; Wikenhauser 1949; Bonsirven 1951; Lohmeyer 1953; Feuillet 1963; Farrer 1964; Caird 1966; Beasley-Murray 1974; Mounce 1977; Sweet 1979; Yarbro Collins 1979; Prigent 1981; Corsini 1983; Morris 1987; Krodel 1989; Boring 1989; Fiorenza 1991; Roloff 1993; Rowland 1993; Richard 1995; Michaels 1997; Aune 1997; Barr 1998; Murphy 1998; Rowland 1998; Beale 1999; Koester 2001; Reddish 2001; Osborne 2002; Witherington 2003; Smalley 2005; Farmer 2005; Boxall 2006; Resseguie 2009; Blount 2009 Flight Boxall 2006 Divine providence Ratton 1912; Rowland 1998 Missionary Corsini 1983; Barr 1998; Knight 1999; Farmer 2005 Revelation/vision Ratton 1912; Beasley-Murray 1974; Kraft 1974; Barr 1998; Knight 1999; Barker 2000; Boxall 2006 Roman Use of Patmos Penal colony

No evidence for use as penal colony

Place of deportation

Beckwith 1919; Charles 1920; Kiddle 1940; Wikenhauser 1949; Bonsirven 1951; Beasley-Murray 1974; Mounce 1977 (although notes Pliny wrongly cited); Osborne 2002 (possibly); Witherington 2003 (probably) Caird 1966; Kraft 1974; Sweet 1979; Boring 1989; Roloff 1993; Aune 1997; Barr 1998; Murphy 1998; Knight 1999; Barker 2000; Reddish 2001; Smalley 2005; Boxall 2006; Resseguie 2009; Blount 2009 Allo 1921; Lohmeyer 1953; Farrer 1964 (possibly); Caird 1966 (possibly); Boring 1989; Barker 2000 (possibly); Koester 2001 (possibly)

Cite Classical Sources (Thucydides; Strabo; Pliny; inscriptions) Swete 1909; Beckwith 1919; Charles 1920; Wikenhauser 1949; Lohmeyer 1953; Caird 1966; Kraft 1974; Mounce 1977; Aune 1997; Barker 2000; Koester 2001; Reddish 2001; Osborne 2002; Witherington 2003; Smalley 2005; Boxall 2006 Cite Patristic Authors Swete 1909; Ratton 1912; Charles 1920; Loisy 1923; Behm 1949; Lohmeyer 1953; Caird 1966; Mounce 1977; Krodel 1989; Michaels 1997; Aune 1997; Knight 1999; Reddish 2001; Osborne 2002; Witherington 2003; Smalley 2005; Boxall 2006

Appendices

231

Interest in John’s Social Status Sweet 1979; Yarbro Collins 1979; Morris 1987; Aune 1997; Murphy 1998; Witherington 2003; Farmer 2005 Interest in Geographical Location of Patmos Swete 1909; Ratton 1912; Beckwith 1919; Charles 1920; Allo 1921; Loisy 1923; Kiddle 1940; Wikenhauser 1949; Lohmeyer 1953; Caird 1966; Beasley-Murray 1974; Kraft 1974; Mounce 1977; Sweet 1979; Yarbro Collins 1979; Prigent 1981; Krodel 1989; Boring 1989; Roloff 1993; Aune 1997; Barr 1998; Murphy 1998; Knight 1999; Koester 2001; Reddish 2001; Osborne 2002; Witherington 2003; Smalley 2005; Farmer 2005; Boxall 2006; Resseguie 2009; Blount 2009 Additional Information Maritime importance Rocky/barren/sparsely populated Aorist implies John no longer there Impact of scenery Substantial population Links to Miletus Shrines to Artemis and Apollo Cave tradition Liturgy on Patmos Temple-like place

Swete 1909 Ratton 1912; Beckwith 1919; Kiddle 1940; Behm 1949; Mounce 1977; Roloff 1993; Barr 1998; Murphy 1998; Koester 2001; Reddish 2001; Osborne 2002; Blount 2009 Beckwith 1919; Bonsirven 1951; Beasley-Murray 1974; Michaels 1997 Swete 1909; Mounce 1977 Loisy 1923; Aune 1997; Osborne 2002 Boring 1989; Aune 1997 Boring 1989; Aune 1997; Murphy 1998; Osborne 2002; Boxall 2006. Wikenhauser 1949; Kraft 1974 Corsini 1983; Richard 1995 Rowland 1998

APPENDIX 2

The ‘Pre-Johannine’ Reception: Patmos in Classical Sources and Inscriptions There are only three references to Patmos in surviving classical writings prior to Revelation. In his History of the Peloponnesian War 3.33.3, Thucydides (c.460— c.395 bce) mentions Patmos in passing while relating events of 428–427 bce. The Paralus and Salaminia are Athenian naval vessels, while the ‘enemy fleet’ is that of the Spartans: And now the Paralus and the Salaminia arrived with the news that they had seen the enemy fleet at Clarus. Paches, therefore, immediately set out in pursuit and went after them as far as the island of Patmos [ åæØ b —  ı B&   ı].1

The Greek historian and geographer Strabo (63/63 bce–ce 24), in his Geography 10.5.13, locates Patmos in relation to surrounding Aegean islands: Nearby [to Leros] are both Patmos and the Corassiae [ºÅ  
 d ŒÆd  —  & ŒÆd ˚ æÆÆØ]; they are situated to the west of Icaria, and Icaria to the west of Samos. Now Icaria is deserted, though it has pastures, which are used by the Samians. But although it is such an isle as it is, still it is famous, and after it is named the sea that lies in front of it, in which are itself and Samos and Cos and the islands just mentioned – the Corossiae and Patmos and Leros.2

The third passage comes from Pliny the Elder (ce 23–79), in the section of his Natural History where he describes the various islands of the Sporades: After these [first group of Sporades] no regular order can be kept, so the remaining islands shall be given in a group: Scyro; Nio, 18 miles from Naxos, venerable as the burial-place of Homer, 22 miles long, previously called Phoenice; Odia; Oletandros; Gioura, with a town of the same name, 15 miles in circumference, 62 miles distant from Andros; 80 miles from Gioura, Syrnos; Cynethus; Telos, noted for its unguent, and called by Callimachus Agathusa; Donusa; Patmos, 30 miles in circumference [Patmos, circuitu triginta millia passuum] . . .3

However, there is also relevant archaeological and inscriptional evidence to inform an otherwise fragmentary picture of the island in John’s day.4 Excavations on the island, particularly in the vicinity of the $ ˇæ & F ˚Æ ºº ı together with potsherds discovered in the area, attest to the almost continuous habitation of Patmos from the Middle Bronze Age to the Roman period, with fortifications constructed in the

1 2 3 4

English translation from Thucydides 1972: 210; Greek text cited in Guérin 1856: 1. Translation from Strabo 1941: 173; Greek text cited in Guérin 1856: 2. Translation from Pliny 1947: 169; Latin cited in Guérin 1856: 2. E.g. Pace 1914: 370–2; Manganaro 1965:293–349.

Appendices

233

Hellenistic period.5 The latter are probably related to the influence of the mainland city of Miletus, for which a number of the local islands including Patmos functioned as çæ æØÆ or ‘fortress islands’.6 More significant are three inscriptions from the later Roman period. The first, a decree in honour of a certain Hegemandros, testifies to the significant population on the island in the 2nd century bce (according to Saffrey, post-183 bce).7 It refers to a gymnasium, of which Hegemandros has been head seven times, associations of torch-runners ( H ºÆÆØ H) and athletic oil-users ( å ø F IºÆ &), and Hegemandros’s donation of a stone statue of Hermes.8 The impression, at least for Patmos two centuries before John, is hardly of a cultural backwater.9 The remaining inscriptions testify to the association of Patmos with the cult of the goddess Artemis, continuing beyond John’s time. The second (undated) example is a brief dedication on a white marble altar to Artemis under her local title of Artemis Patmia: [
`]æ ØØ —Æ [Æ fi ].10 A third inscription, preserved in the monastery and dated to the 2nd century ce, is an honorary inscription in elegiacs to the priestess of Artemis on the island, the "æ çæ & Vera, daughter of the physician Glaukios. This describes Patmos (or —  & as this inscription prefers)11 as ‘the most illustrious island of the daughter of Leto’ (B  IªÆı  Å ¸Å ø ), pointing to a significant ‘pre-history’ in which John’s visionary island was celebrated as an island sacred to Artemis.12 The inscription attributes the establishment of the cult of Artemis on Patmos, named here as Artemis Scythia, to Orestes, son of Agamemnon, in recompense for his sin of matricide.13 This seems to offer a Patmian variant of the Orestes myth as found in Euripides, whereby Orestes overcame his crime by recovering from barbarians in Tauria a sacred statue of Artemis, believed to have fallen from heaven. The Patmos inscription apparently claims that this sacred statue was brought, not to Athens, but to Artemis’s own island of Patmos. In the transcription in Guérin, there is an explicit reference to her temple on Patmos: [K]ÆPºÆE
`æ Ø ŒıŁÅ.14 The reading preferred by Saffrey, and McCabe and Plunkett, ıºÆE&
`æ Ø & ŒıŁÅ&, has Vera return to Patmos, the island of her birth, by the ‘will of Artemis Scythia’. Nevertheless the reference to a significant cult statue, a priestess, and an altar beside which Vera offers the traditional

5

Hope Simpson and Lazenby 1970: 48–51; Saffrey 1975; Stone 1981: 5; Boxall 2010; McGilchrist 2010: 143. 6 Greaves 2002: 3–4. The others were Leipsoi (Lipsi) and Leros. 7 Inscription 001 in McCabe and Plunkett 1985; Saffrey 1975: 394–5. 8 See discussion by Saffrey 1975: 393–7, and Haussoullier 1902: 138–40. 9 For a novel which offers an imaginative reconstruction of Patmos emphasizing its significant culture and its connectivity with the Asian mainland, see McCook 1911. 10 Inscription 003 in McCabe and Plunkett 1985. On the basis of this inscription, Saffrey suggests that Patmos claimed to be the location of Artemis’s birth: Saffrey 1975: 407–10. 11 The name Patmos is also found on a marble inscription Guérin saw on a marble plaque at the entrance to the monastery library on Patmos: Œ æ ç& K Ø —  & ÅÐ & (Guérin 1856: 4). 12 Inscription 004 in McCabe and Plunkett 1985; see Haussoullier 1902: 140; Saffrey 1975: 399–407. Guérin, following Ross, has the reading I[]Æıæ  Å, ‘most gloomy’ or ‘most dim’: Guérin 1856: 58. 13 Guérin 1856: 17. 14 Guérin 1856: 59.

234

Patmos in the Reception History of the Apocalypse

Artemisian sacrifice of young goats, is sufficient evidence for a thriving temple in this period. This inscriptional evidence fits with much later traditions, which claim that Christodoulos constructed the monastery on the site of the temple of Artemis, destroying the cult statue in the process. This inscriptional evidence strongly suggests that accounts of John’s Patmos as an isolated penal colony or cultural backwater are historically implausible.

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Index Aaron 127 Abbey, C. J. 167–8 Abraham 15, 39, 91 Achaia 79 Acts of John 50–1, 106, 222 Acts of John at Rome 51–3, 215 Acts of John by Prochorus 1, 4, 11, 29, 40, 50, 57, 105, 106–14, 115, 117–21, 122, 124, 126, 127, 130, 131, 132, 142, 166, 191, 192–4, 210, 213, 221–4, 225 actualization 12–13, 30, 34, 36, 45, 55, 61, 63, 80, 82, 92–5, 97, 104, 132, 134, 135, 150, 154, 157–60, 173, 196, 203, 208, 214, 218, 219, 221, 229 Adam 24, 91, 118, 204 Aegean 1, 2, 17, 18, 19, 26, 27, 38, 63, 77, 79, 107, 126, 129, 132, 138, 145, 146, 151, 160, 166, 172, 174, 186, 232 Aelius Aristeides 18 Albert of Prague 99, 101 Alcázar, Luís de 8, 148, 206 Alcuin of Tours 65, 72 Alexander, W. 169 Alexander Minorita (Alexander of Bremen) 75, 77, 85, 86, 88, 189 Alexander of Hales 92–5, 96, 97, 221 Alexios I Comnenos, Emperor 128–9 allegory/decoding 4, 12–13, 20–1, 36, 38, 46, 55, 57, 63, 69, 70–3, 74, 76, 89–91, 97, 161– 2, 170, 214, 217, 218, 219–21 Ambrose Autpert 56, 63, 67–8, 69, 71, 72–3, 86, 151 Andreas of Caesarea 8, 34, 56, 105, 116, 117, 121, 125, 194 Anglo-Norman Apocalypses 179, 181–90, 194, 208, 213 Anselm of Laon 80, 86 Antichrist 31, 46, 97, 154, 155–6, 157, 182, 188 Anti-Marcionite Prologue 35, 41 Antioch 77, 108, 124, 125, 126, 127, 131, 132, 165 Antipas of Pergamum 161, 169 Antony of Egypt 120 Antony of Kiev 120 Apollo 18, 19, 109, 110, 146, 167, 169, 194, 214, 222, 231 Apringius of Béja 56, 57, 59–60, 64, 115 Arethas 117, 194

Aretius, B. 160 Armageddon 21, 161 Armenian interpretation 4, 13, 105, 106, 117, 120–1, 124, 125, 132 art 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 25, 65, 78, 98, 106, 145, 167, 177–208, 210, 212, 226 Artemis 9, 19, 54, 108, 110, 112, 113, 128, 175, 214, 224, 231, 233–4 Arthur, R. 44, 45, 55 Aser pinguis 89–90, 91, 93, 220 Athanasius of Antioch 131, 132 Athanasius the Athonite 120 Athens 45, 114, 169, 220, 232, 233 Athos, Mount 120, 190–1, 218 Attridge, H. A. 118 Augustine 38, 46, 47, 53, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 64, 67, 75, 77, 84, 187, 188, 201, 211, 217 Aune, D. E. 175 Aureol, Peter 83, 88 Babylon 16, 20, 21, 26, 46, 52, 53, 83, 93, 138, 152, 157, 161, 214 Backus, I. 153, 157 Baldung Grien, Hans 203 Bale, J. 145, 153, 157 Bamberg 36, 180, 186 Barker, M. 23 Barnes, A. 139–40, 148 Barnes, R. 134 Barr, D. 16, 23 Barton, J. 226 Baruch 119 Basil the Great 151–2 Bass Rock, The 159 Bassano, Jacopo 178 Bauckham, R. 152, 155 beast 22, 26, 46, 47, 52, 138, 182, 214, 229 Beatus of Liébana 8, 47, 56, 59, 60, 68–9, 180–1, 183, 187 Becker, E. -M. 10 Beckwith, I. T. 174 Bede, The Venerable 8, 38, 47, 53, 56, 62, 63, 64–7, 68, 151, 180, 198, 213, 216, 217, 223 Benedict Biscop 65 Bent, J. T. 26 Benz, E. 120 Berdini, P. 5, 11, 178 Berengaudus 84, 182, 183, 184, 185, 188, 203 Bernardinus of Siena 82

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Bethel 91, 151, 160, 213, 221 Bethlehem 119 Bibliander, T. 149 Blackadder, J. 159–60 Bochart, S. 162 Böcher, O. 10 Bockmuehl, M. 3, 7 Boesak, A. 225 boiling oil episode 33, 34, 42, 49, 52, 54, 67, 76, 77, 78, 99–101, 137, 139, 153, 155, 156, 189, 219 Bonaventure 92, 93 Bonnet, M. 51 Bordone, B. 145 Boring, E. 22, 174 Bosch, Hieronymus 185, 197–201, 203, 206, 208, 216, 226 Bossuet, J. B. 136, 148 Botticelli, Sandro 197, 201–3, 226 Bousset, W. 7, 133, 141 Bowles, W. L. 166–7 Brent, A. 35 Brightman, T. 140, 147, 148 Brocard, J. 155–6 Broughton, H. 150, 159 Brown, D. 211, 222, 225 Browning, R. 162, 164–5, 166 Brueggemann, W. 15, 224 Brufani, S. 95 Bruno of Segni 84, 217 Bulengerus, P. 151, 156, 216 Bullinger, H. 139, 145, 149, 154, 155, 157 Bûlus al–Bûšî 121 Burgkmair, Hans 145, 185, 197, 203–5, 206, 213, 218, 225 Caesarius of Arles 56, 57 Caird, G. B. 33, 174 Calvin, John 134, 160 Carmelites 205, 206, 207 Carruthers, M. 57, 72, 226 Cassiodorus 56, 60–2, 215 Cave of Machpelah 118 Cave of the Apocalypse, Patmos 114, 117–21, 130, 143, 163, 165, 166, 171, 191, 192–4, 195, 208, 216, 221, 223, 225, 231 Charles, R. H. 7, 173 Chebar, River 15, 16, 224 Chios 79, 147 Christodoulos of Patmos 5, 10, 79, 120, 128–31, 132, 145, 161, 193, 214, 217, 223, 234 Christopher Columbus 79, 204–5, 213 Chytraeus, D. 146–7, 154 Claudius, Emperor 31, 40, 55, 59, 69, 107, 126, 127, 131, 136, 137, 181, 219 Clement of Alexandria 32, 35, 36, 39, 173

Constantakopoulou, C. 18 Constantine, D. 163, 164 Constantine, Emperor 51, 109, 119, 126, 222, 224 Constantinople 79, 110, 195 Contendings of the Apostles 122 Coptic interpretation 4, 13, 105, 106, 117, 121–3 Corassiae 19, 146, 147, 232 Corsini, E. 175, 176 Cos 17, 128, 164, 232 Cotterius, M. 145, 146, 150, 213 Cowley, R. 125–7 Cranach, Lucas 157, 190 Crete 17, 79, 146 Cromwell, Oliver 150 Cromwell, Thomas 153 Culbertson, R. 148 Culpepper, R. A. 10, 28, 38, 49, 106, 165, Cyclades 18, 130, 146, 150, 162 Cyprus 17, 107, 163, 221 Cyril Lucar, Patriarch of Constantinople 195 Daley, B. 56–7 Daniel 15, 16, 18, 30, 41, 42, 46, 127, 152, 188, 213, 224 Dante 200–1 de Angelis, R. 202 De Enigmatibus ex Apocalypsi Iohannis 69–70 Death of St John 113 Death of the Apostle John (Homily of Pseudo–Chrysostom) 112 Delos 18, 146, 147, 167, 169, 181, 214 diachronic 3, 11, 211, 218 Didymus the Blind 36 Dio 109, 118 Diobouniotis, C. 36 Diocletian, Emperor 37 Dionysius bar Salîbî 34, 121, 124–5 Dionysius of Alexandria 110, 123 Dionysius of Fourna 192–3 Dionysius the Areopagite, see Pseudo-Dionysius Dionysius the Carthusian 83–4 Dixon, R. W. 168–9 Dodecanese 19, 146, 172 Dominicans 78, 88–92, 97, 104, 190, 201, 202 Domitian, Emperor 30, 31–2, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 48, 51–3, 54, 55, 58, 60, 61, 62, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 76, 78, 79, 80, 90, 91, 96, 99–101, 107, 108, 113, 115, 117, 124, 125, 126, 131, 135, 136–8, 139, 140, 141, 142, 152, 153, 154–6, 161, 166, 183, 189–90, 219, 229 Donatello 188, 202

Index Drusiana 53, 54, 183 Dulaey, M. 37, 38, 48, 49 Duns Scotus 92 Dürer, Albrecht 185, 190, 196, 197, 203, 204, 206, 216 Durham, J. 150 Duvet, Jean 196, 208 Eden, Garden of 24–5, 132, 185, 187, 197, 204, 212, 218, 225 Edward I, King 184 Egypt 20, 79, 120, 121, 161 Eichhorn, J. G. 133, 141 Eleanor of Castile 184 Elliott, E. B. 142 Enoch 15, 20, 24–5, 26, 63, 187, 214 Ephesus 32, 39, 43, 45, 50, 51–5, 79, 86, 96, 100, 107, 108, 111, 112, 113, 118, 122–3, 124, 125, 126, 137, 140, 147, 156, 166, 172, 184, 215 Epiphanius 40–1, 59, 107, 112, 126, 136–7, 181 Epithymitos, Bishop 128 Erasmus, Desiderius 135 Esau 90, 152 Ethiopian interpretation 4, 13, 77, 105, 106, 121, 122, 123, 125–7, 131, 214, 220 Euphrates, River 21 Eusebius of Caesarea 29, 32, 39–40, 43, 50, 51, 110, 115, 117, 137, 141, 154, 171 Ezekiel 15, 16, 18, 20, 24, 30, 41, 46, 92, 152, 167, 213, 224 Ezra 16, 171 Férotin, M. 64 Florence 188, 201, 202, 203, 226 Foord, J. 136, 145 Fourth Gospel 35, 40, 41, 45, 49, 62, 66–7, 70, 81, 90, 96–7, 98–9, 103, 106, 110–11, 112, 113–14, 117, 118, 119, 123, 124, 125, 128, 130, 132, 138, 159, 163, 165, 191, 192, 193, 207, 216–7 Foxe, J. 139, 156–7 Fra Angelico 201 Fraenger, W. 198 Francis of Assisi 92–5, 104, 221, 224 Franciscans 75, 77, 82, 83, 85, 88, 92, 93, 97, 104, 135, 153, 158, 182, 190, 213 Fraser–Tytler, C. E. 140 fretum 70–3, 76, 85, 86–8, 89, 90, 92, 144, 160, 214, 220 Froom, L. 7 Fulke, W. 139, 147–8, 149, 223 Gadamer, H. –G. 6, 7, 9, 178, 209 Galavaris, G. 195, 204

269

Gallienus, Emperor 37 Geil, W. E. 26 gematria 6, 22, 72, 87, 212, 215 Geneva 136, 153, 196 Gentiles 18, 150, 213 Geoffey of Auxerre 81, 86, 87–8 geography/topography 1–2, 4, 5, 6, 11, 16, 18, 19–21, 29, 30, 31, 55, 63, 66, 68, 73, 76–80, 107, 113, 126, 127, 132, 134, 135–6, 143, 145–52, 166, 172, 175, 176, 185–8, 194–5, 204, 212, 213, 214, 217, 219, 221, 227, 231, 232 Giffard, G. 140 Giotto 188, 202 Glossa ordinaria 49, 71, 76, 77, 78, 80, 85, 86, 91, 136 Gnostics 29, 50 Gog 21 Golden Legend 53, 78, 97, 102, 103, 178 Gontard, S. 162 Gorricio, C. 204 Greece 17, 87, 164, 167 Gregg, S. 228 Gregory the Great, Pope 64, 70 Gregory VII, Pope (Hildebrand) 86 Gregory IX, Pope 93 Grotius, H. 137, 148 Gryson, R. 47, 59, 63, 64, 73, Gumerlock, F. X. 28 Gwynn, J. 35 Hadrian, Emperor 107, 108, 109, 131, 219, 221 hagiography 4, 8, 10, 29, 56, 66, 78, 99, 102, 103, 105, 106, 121–4, 139, 156, 194 Haimo of Auxerre 62, 69, 71, 85, 86 Hamburger, J. 102 Hardouin, J. 161–2, 214, 216, 220 Harnack, A. 35, 36 Haussleiter, J. 38 Helms, C. 29 Hemer, C. 171 Henry VIII, King 153 Herder, J. G. 10 Hermogenes 29 Herod Agrippa, King 36, 42, 54, hesychasm 120, 129, 132, 193, 223 Hezekiah 16 Himmelfarb, M. 20, 24, 30, 63 Hippolytus 34–5, 38, 41, 46, 53, 96, 121, 124, 213, 216 historical criticism 1–6, 11, 12, 23–4, 29, 30, 55, 133, 143, 170–5, 176, 210, 211, 219, 222, 225, 226–7 history of interpretation 6, 8, 10, 211 History of James and John 124

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Hoe, M. 136, 139, 146 Hölderlin, F. 5, 10, 162–4, 213 Holland, H. 134, 139 Honert, J. van den 162 Hooper, J. 161 Horeb 16, 119, 132, 151, 193–4, 213, 222, 224 Horn, F. W. 10 Hort, F. J. A. 138 Hugh of St Cher 89, 90 Hwaetbert (Eusebius) 64 hymnody 4, 99–101, 123 Ibn Kâtib Qaisar 121 Ignatius of Antioch 43, 124 imagination 1, 6, 29–30, 83, 107, 115, 132, 143–4, 168, 176, 188, 224–6 Immaculate Conception 205–07 Irenaeus 31–2, 36, 39, 154, 193 Irving, E. 143 Isaiah 16, 161–2, 204, 216 Isidore 53, 70, 78, 98, 162 islands 16–19, 20, 23, 25, 66, 79, 125, 129, 146–7, 148, 149, 150, 163–4, 174, 181, 183, 186–8, 204, 212, 213, 232–3 Israel 18, 89–90, 112, 119, 151 Italy 17, 57, 60, 67, 155, 180, 188, 197, 202, 203 Jacob 61, 89–91, 151, 152, 167, 204, 213 Jacobs, L. 200 Jacobus de Voragine 53, 78, 97 James I, King (James VI of Scotland) 141, 150, 215 James, M. R. 186 Jauss, H. –R. 7 Jenour, A. 143 Jeremiah 119, 127, 152 Jerome 28, 37, 40, 41–3, 47–9, 53, 54, 58, 59, 60, 61, 64, 67, 68, 69, 70, 73, 77, 137, 141 ‘Jerusalem of the Aegean’ 1, 26 Jerusalem/new Jerusalem 16, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 50, 62, 67, 86, 98–9, 137, 138, 150, 161–2, 164, 169, 171, 176, 179, 182, 184, 185, 187, 195, 205, 212, 216 Jesuits 134, 141, 147, 151, 152, 161 Jezebel 118, 119, 223 Joachim of Fiore 57, 75, 77, 81–2, 83, 86, 134, 155, 182, 217 John Chrysostom 112, 116, 211 John of the Cross 206 John of Rhodes 129 Jonas, J. 158, 159 Junius, F. 136, 146 Junod, E. 50, 51, 52, 106, 121 Justinian, Emperor 57 Juvenal 174

Kaestli, J. –D. 50, 51, 52, 106, 122 Karlin–Hayter, P. 130 Kelly, J. 142 Klein, P. K. 180 Koester, C. R. 174 Kohn, T. 16 Konrad von Haimburg 100 Kovacs, J. 7, 10, 12–3, 30, 45, 55, 61, 70, 93, 97, 154, 157–8, 208, 211, 218, 228 Kraft, H. 170–1, 175 Kretschmar, G. 7 Kromayer, H. 146 Krummacher, A. 143 Kynops 109, 112, 194, 221 La Verna, Mount 94–5 Lalleman, P. 50, 51 Lamb 47, 95, 167, 179, 182, 185, 195, 201, 217 Lambert, F. 153 Lamoreaux, J. C. 115 Laodicea 51, 53 Lapide, C. à 139, 141–2, 152, 156, 213 Last Supper 58, 62, 66–7, 74, 91, 98, 103, 200, 216 Leonardo da Vinci 79 Lerner, R. E. 90 Leros 19–20, 79, 146, 147, 232 Leto 19, 233 Leucius 50, 106 Lewis, S. 182, 184 Linfert, C. 198, 199 Lipsius, R. A. 106, 112 liturgy 4, 8, 10, 66, 78, 80, 97–103, 105, 109, 110, 132, 176, 178, 179, 180, 182, 193, 205, 208, 216, 231 Lollards 78, 102, 157 Lombard Invasion 57 Louth, A. 44 Ludolph of Suchem 79 Lupieri, E. F. 17, 18 Luther, Martin 1, 5, 10, 78, 133, 134, 155, 157–9, 176, 190, 211, 214, 218, 221 Luz, U. 3, 7, 8–9, 211, 220, 226 Lyons, W. J. 7, 29 Magog 17, 21 Maier, G. 7 Maier, H. 207 Malta 17 Marcion 29, 35, 41 Marlorate, A. 145, 153–4, 157, 160–1 Marmareon 108, 122, 126 Martin, G. 137 Martin of Leon 85, 86, 96, 97, 216

Index martyrs/martyrdom 30, 33, 34, 36–7, 39, 41–2, 43, 46, 54, 67, 81, 152, 156, 169, 183, 189, 219, 229 Mary, Virgin 123–4, 131, 198, 200, 201–2, 205–6 Mason, T. 141, 148 Masson, J. (Latomus) 158–9 Master Bertram 189, 194, 208, 215 Master IF 191 Matter, E. A. 58, 67 Maximos of Kallipolis 195 McCook, H. C. 166 meaning 3, 4, 6, 15, 19, 20, 21–2, 24, 57, 58, 71, 73, 85, 86, 87, 93, 142, 152, 161, 174, 200, 213, 215, 219–20, 225, 227 Mediterranean 17–18, 76–7, 79, 126, 214 Melanchthon, Philipp 154 Melito of Sardis 43 Melitus of Laodicea 53–4 Memling, Hans 195–6, 198 Menabuoi, Giusto de’ 188 Menestò, E. 95 Mertes, R. 166 Meyer, S. 135 Michael the Syrian 123–4 Mildmay, W. 154 Miletus 9, 18, 51, 110, 145, 147, 172, 175, 231, 233 millennium 29, 58, 218 mines on Patmos 37, 38, 48–9, 58, 62, 68, 69, 73, 110, 115, 139–40, 156, 167, 216, 225 Mingana, A. 123 Mirk, John 102–3 Moissac 100, 181 Monarchian Prologue 49, 69 Monastery of St John the Theologian, Patmos 5, 10, 79, 128–31, 143, 192–3, 194, 214, 223, 233 monasticism 5, 61–2, 65, 67, 68, 72, 76, 79, 81–4, 87–8, 97, 99, 102, 104, 116, 120, 128–32, 139, 149, 151, 176, 179, 181, 182, 191, 193, 194, 212, 214, 217, 220, 223, 225 Monophysites 45, 55, 115 Morgan, N. 185 Moses 4, 109, 111–13, 119, 126, 127, 151–2, 171, 213, 222, 223, 224 Mounce, R. H. 176, 225 Mount of Olives 119 Muddiman, J. 226 Munster, S. 147 Murray, J. 139, 148 mythic geography 4, 20, 26, 30, 55, 63, 186, 188, 194–5, 212, 214, 219 Napier, J. 141, 215 Nelson, R. 114

271

Nero, Emperor 31, 40, 42–3, 51, 53, 72, 115, 124, 137–8, 219 Nerses of Lambron 121, 125, 132 Nerva, Emperor 39, 43, 52, 156 Nestorius 124 Newton, I. 138–9 Newton, T. 138 Nicaea 50 Nicephorus Callistus 113–14 Nicephorus of Constantinople 110 Nicholas of Cusa 199 Nicholas of Gorran 91–2, 93, 96, 97 Nicholas of Lyra 8, 75, 77, 158 Nicholls, R. 210 Niketas of Salonica 117 Noah 17, 88, 127 North Africa 32, 34, 58 Numerius, Emperor 37 O’Hear, N. 7, 185 Oecumenius 56, 57, 105, 114–16, 117, 132, 225
kland, J. 7, 25 Olivi, Peter John 75, 83, 86–7, 88, 93 Opus Arduum 78, 157 Origen 34, 35–7, 40, 42, 70, 116, 173 Orosius 154 Pacheco, F. 205–6 Palmosa 19, 145, 147, 160, 162, 189, 214 Papias of Hierapolis 29 Papias the Grammarian 87 Pareus, D. 141, 145 Paris 65, 184, 185, 189, 190 Paris, Matthew 182 Parthia/Parthians 38 Passio Iohannis (Pseudo–Melitus) 53–4, 78 Paul, St 33, 39, 43, 44, 50, 79, 108, 109, 112, 139, 142, 171, 211, 219, 220, 224 Paul the hermit 120 Peganius, A. B. (C. Knorr von Rosenroth) 137 Percy, W. A. 123 Pergamum 161, 169 Pervo, R. 50 Peter, St 33, 39, 41, 43, 50, 54, 65, 67, 81–2, 109, 112, 123, 124, 139 Peter the Athonite 120 Peter of Tarantaise 91, 96, 216 Philadelphia 43 Pliny the Elder 19–20, 145–6, 151, 174, 187, 230, 232 poetry 4, 5, 8, 134, 144, 162–70, 176, 212 Polycarp 44, 124 Poussin, N. 197 Prigent, P. 7, 34, 38, 46

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Primasius 11, 48, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62–3, 64–5, 66, 68, 69, 70–1, 86, 115, 135, 151, 213, 216, 223 Prince of Wales (future Edward VII) 149 Priscillian 49, 69 Prochorus 105, 106–12, 113, 114, 118, 120–1, 126, 127, 132, 191–2, 193, 208, 221 Prochorus Acts, see Acts of John by Prochorus prophecy/prophet 15, 22, 23, 30, 30, 35, 37–8, 40, 41, 44, 46, 48, 51, 59, 76, 85, 87, 93, 96–7, 116, 118–9, 127, 135, 149, 151, 152, 153, 156, 157, 158, 161–2, 166–7, 168, 197, 203, 204–5, 208, 212, 213, 216, 219, 223, 224, 226, 229 Pseudo–Dionysius 44–5, 55, 135, 220, 225 Pseudo–Ignatius 43 Pseudo–Jerome 73 Ptolemy 147, 151 Pyle, T. 156 Räisänen, H. 7, 8 Ramsay, W. 171 Reeves, M. 82 Reformation 4, 5, 7, 75, 133–60, 167, 176, 195, 215 Renaissance 5, 7, 134, 195 Renan, E. 164 Rhodes 17, 129, 146 Ribera, F. 147, 151 Richard of St Victor 76–7, 78, 80, 83 Richards, P. 176 Riches, J. 211 Robert of Anjou 188 Roberts, J. 210 Robson, M. 94 Rome 21, 33–4, 39, 41, 46, 51–3, 54, 56, 65, 78, 99, 101, 137, 138, 139, 149, 150, 153, 155, 156, 159, 170, 172, 181, 183, 189, 215, 219, 226, 229 Rosaccio, G. 145 Rossetti, C. 169–70 Rowland, C. 7, 10, 11, 12–13, 30, 45, 55, 61, 70, 93, 97, 154, 157, 158, 175–6, 199, 208, 211–12, 218, 219, 228 Rupert of Deutz 86 Rusher, W. E. 168 Ruysbroeck, Jan van 197 Saewulf 79 Saffrey, H. D. 9, 175, 233 Salmeron, A. 152 Samothrace 17 Sanders, J. 38 Santorini 26 Savonarola, Girolamo 155, 202–3 Sawley Map 187

Schäferdiek, K. 53 Schongauer, Martin 198, 203, 206 Seleucia 125–6, 127 Seneca 187, 204 Septimius Severus, Emperor 36 sermons 4, 32, 36, 53, 59, 66–7, 81, 92, 97, 102–3, 112, 116, 125, 134, 138, 140, 143, 145–6, 149, 152, 155, 157, 162, 176, 202, 216 Ševčenko, N. 192, 193 seven churches of Asia 16, 21, 38, 45, 51, 60, 77, 82, 84, 86, 119, 140, 150, 161–2, 168, 171, 186, 217, 223, 225 Seville 204, 205, 207 Shaffer, E. 164 Sicily 17, 107, 221 Sickingen, F. von 158 Simeon Metaphrastes 113, 117, 132, 142 Sinai 4, 110–14, 116, 119, 128, 130–2, 191–2, 213, 222–3, 224 Skeen, R. 140 Smyrna 43, 51, 79 Snodgrass, J. 148, 162 Sodom 20 Solomon 25, 91 sons of Zebedee 36, 42, 43, 54, 114, 124, 161 Spain 17, 197, 205 Spalatin, G. 159 Sporades 18, 19–20, 113, 140, 141, 146, 172, 174, 214, 232 Stanley, A. 138, 149 Steinhauser, K. B. 47, 60, 63, 65, 68 Stephen, St 42, 43, 152, 213 Stephens, W. R. 143–4 Story of John the Son of Zebedee 112 Strabo 19, 145, 146, 147, 175, 230, 232 Strauss, D. F. 164 Sweet, J. 20 synchronic 11, 195, 218 Syriac History of John 50, 122 Syriac interpretation 4, 19, 34, 40, 44, 50, 105, 121, 122, 123–4, 131, 137, 162 Tacitus 174 Taffin, J. 138 Tarshish 17 Tarsians 43 Temple 24–5, 26, 151, 162, 175–6, 195, 212, 216, 224, 231 Tertullian 32–4, 36, 39, 41, 42, 43, 49, 55, 115, 135, 139, 152, 173, 215 Theodotion 42 Theodulph of Orleans 73 Theophanes the Greek 190 Thomas Aquinas 92 Thomas of Celano 92, 93–5

Index Thornton, J. 189 Thucydides 19, 175, 230, 232 Tiberius, Emperor 123, 126, 127, 131, 219 Tigris, River 15, 16, 224 Tirinus, J. 146 Titelmans, F. 135 Titian 196 Titus, Emperor 127 Trajan, Emperor 31, 39, 43, 107, 108–9, 131, 219, 221 Travels of St John the Son of Zebedee 122 Travels of Sir John Mandeville 11, 79–80, 98, 184 Turner, S. 7, 10 Tyconius 8, 11, 28, 37, 46–7, 48, 53, 56–9, 60–1, 63, 64, 66, 68, 72, 75, 77, 84, 217 Tylis 186–8, 213 Tyre 17 Tzanzes, Nicolaus 130 Uccello, Paolo 202 Valerian, Emperor 37 van der Meer, F. 7, 196 van Eyck, Jan 203 Velázquez, Diego 185, 196, 197, 205–7 Vespasian, Emperor 137, 138 Vespucci, Amerigo 205 Victorinus of Pettau 8, 11, 19, 21, 26, 28, 37–8, 47, 48–9, 55, 58, 59, 60, 61, 64, 68, 96, 110, 115, 140, 152, 215, 216, 225 Vidit Iacob 78, 90–1, 93, 213, 221 Viegas, Blasius 146, 151, 213

273

Vigilius 61 Vincent of Beauvais 79 Vink, E. 198 Virtutes Johannis (Pseudo–Abdias) 53, 54–5, 77, 105 visual exegesis 5, 11, 26, 177, 178–9, 208, 214 Vital du Four 82–3, 92 Volfing, A. 98, 102 Volonakis, M. 23 Vox Domini 92, 213 Wainwright, A. 7 Waple, E. 138, 150, 152, 213 Wartburg 1, 5, 158–9, 214 Wearmouth 65 Weinrich, W. C. 59 Weiss, B. 133 Whiston, W. 137 Williams, I. 137 Williams, J. 180 Williams, N. 166 Winckelmann, J. 159 Wink, W. 226 Wirkungsgeschichte 6–9, 209, 211, 226 Witherington, B. 225 Wordsworth, C. 144 York 101, 189 Zahn, T. 106, 107, 118 Zion 16, 21, 195, 216 Zwingli, Huldrych 134, 145, 153