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The Fate of Babies Dying before Baptism in Byzantium*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Jane Baun
Jane Baun*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Princeton University
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Extract

In the city of the Laodikaians lived a devout, pure, and blameless priest. To this priest one night the local governor came in urgent haste, pressing him to rise up and baptize his child, whose breath was already beginning to fail. Leaping up right away, the priest ran into the church. But while he was preparing the water and the holy oil the child died, before it could be baptized.

Taking the child, the priest placed it in front of the font and said to the attendant angel, ‘To you, my fellow servant, angel of God, I say: by the authority that Christ gave us to bind and loose in heaven and upon earth, restore the soul of the child in the body until I shall baptize it, lest it depart unenlightened into that age. For my Master and yours knows that I was not careless, but when I was called, I ran straight away.’ When the priest had spoken, the child returned to life. He then baptized it, kissed it, and said, ‘Go, child, into the kingdom of heaven.’ And immediately the child fell back asleep in the Lord.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 31: The Church and Childhood , 1994 , pp. 115 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1990

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Footnotes

*

I am indebted to Bishop Basil Rodzianko and Dr Joseph Munitiz. S. J., and also to Professors Peter Brown and Judith Herrin, for their patient endurance and many helpful suggestions.

References

1 Theognosti Thesaurus, ed. Joseph A. Munitiz, Joseph A.. CChr.SG, 5 (1979) [hereafter Thesaurus] XV2, 5, pp. 129–30.Google Scholar

2 Halkin, F., ed., Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca, 3rd edn, 3 vols (Brussels. 1957), no. 1444X.Google Scholar

3 As cited in Munitiz, Thesaurus, pp. lxxiii-iv, who places its probable origin in the seventh-century Anastasian corpus.

4 For the centrality of the fate of babies to the Pelagian controversy, see Elizabeth Clark, A., The Origenist Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an Early Christian Debate (Princeton, NJ, 1992), pp. 194–244 Google Scholar. I am indebted to Gary Hansen for this reference.

5 A judgement echoed by Kallistos Ware, Bishop, in his The Orthodox Church (New York, 1980), p. 229, n. 2.Google Scholar

6 For ‘the Latin doctrine of purgatory’ as a sore point between East and West, see Meyendorff, John, ‘Theology in the Thirteenth Century: Methodological Contrasts’, in Chrysostomides, J., ed., Kathegetria: Essays presented to Joan Hussey (Camberley, 1988), p. 403, with n. 20.Google Scholar

7 ‘Petrou Khartophylakos erõtêmata’, in Rhallës, G. and Potlës, M., eds, Syntagma tõn theiõn kai hieran kanofíõn, 6 vols (Athens, 1852-9) [hereafter RP.Syn.], 5, p. 369 Google Scholar. Darrouzès, S., ‘Les Réponses de Nicolas III à l’êvêque de Zètounion’, in Chrysostomides, ed., Kalhegetria, p. 336.Google Scholar

8 Eight days: Symeon of Thessalonikie, On the Holy Sacraments [hereafter Sym.Thess.], 60, PC 155, cols 209-12; forty days: Peter the Chartophylax, in RP.Syn., 5, p. 369. Current Eastern Orthodox practice tends toward forty days; cf. Lazor, Fr Paul., ed. Baptism, Dept. of Religious Education, The Orthodox Church in America (New York, 1972), pp. 21–2.Google Scholar

9 Sym.Thess., 63, PG 188, col. 228. See also Balsamon and Zonaras’ commentaries on Apostolic Canon no. 50, PC 137, cols 138-42.

10 Sym.Thess., 58, PG 155, col. 208.

11 Nikephoros the Confessor, canons (2nd ser.) 6, 7, in RP.Sytt., 4, p. 431.

12 For the West, see Shahar, Shulamith, Childhood in the Middle Ages (London, 1990), pp. 49–50.Google Scholar

13 Timothy of Alexandria, questions 6, 7, in RP.Syn., 4, pp. 334-5.

14 Complete corpus in PG 88, cols 1889-1918.

15 John the Faster, canon 24, in RP.Syn., 4, p. 443.

16 Clark, , Origenist Controversy, pp. 197, 221, 232–9, 244.Google Scholar

17 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 40, PC 36, cols 381-9; for a strikingly similar nineteenth-century view see Cyril, Patriarch of Constantinople, tr. in Charles Stewart, Demons and the Devil: Moral Imagination in Modern Creek Culture (Princeton, NJ, 1991), p. 196.

18 Anastasius of Sinai, Question 81, PG 89, col. 709 (no. 9 of the original Anastasian questions).

19 Apocalypsis Anastasiae, ed. Homberg, Rudolf (Leipzig, 1903), p. 5.Google Scholar

20 Ibid., p. 9.

21 Thesaurus, XV2, 4, lines 617-24, 633-7.

22 Meycndorff, John, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (New York, 1979), pp. 143–6.Google Scholar

23 Cabasilas, Nicolas, a Vie en Christ, ed. Marie-Hélène Congourdeau, SC, 355, 2 vols (1989)Google Scholar; English tr. Catanzaro, C.J. de, The Life in Christ (Crestwood, NY, 1974)Google Scholar. The late Father John Meyendorff made extensive use of Cabasilas in his now standard Byzantine Theology.

24 Cabasilas, , Vie en Christ, i, 19, ii, 8; 1, pp. 94–5, 138.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., ii, 11–13; 1, pp. 140-2.

26 Thesaurus, XV2 , 4, lines 628-37, p. 129.

27 John the Faster, ‘Exerpta’, PG 88, col. 1933D; Nicholas Grammatikos, in Darrouzès, ‘Réponses’, p. 336.

28 Cabasilas, Vie en Christ, ii, 14, lines 1-5; 1, p. 144.

29 Sym.Thess., 60, PG 155, col. 209B.

30 Stewart, Demons, pp. 213-14.

31 Ibid., pp. 55, 208.

32 Ibid., p. 214; Sym.Thess., 61, PG 155, cols 212-14.

33 Stewart, Demons, p. 196.