Shaw, 'Le martyre de Pionios, pretre de Smyrne', Bryn Mawr Medieval Review 9502
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmmr/bmmr-9502-shaw-le

@@@@95.2.1, Robert, Le martyre de Pionios

Louis Robert [edition, translation, commentary], <i>Le martyre de
Pionios, pretre de Smyrne,</i> mis au point et complete par G.W.
Bowersock et C.P. Jones. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks
Research Library and Collection, 1994. Pp. ix & 152. ISBN
0-88402-217-X.
     Reviewed by Brent D. Shaw -- The University of Lethbridge 

     This posthumous work by Louis Robert, the doyen of Greek
cultural historians and epigraphers, is testimony both to his
massive erudition and to the magnitude of our loss. Ever since he
delivered a lecture on the Greek text of the martyrdom of Pionios
at a conference in Warsaw in 1968, Robert had never ceased to
concern himself with the subject and had continued to collect
materials that were to be used to produce a final edition of the
text. His interests were driven in part by a genuine piety marked
by his epigraphs to the book--the one from the Latin liturgy and
the other expressing his gratitude to the Capuchin Fathers of the
parish of St. Polycarp in present-day Smyrna. Both the textual
materials and those aggregated in support of an explication of
its contents were to be presented as a volume in the <i>Sources
chretiennes</i> series. Robert's death in 1985, however, left the
project in a state well short of final book form. It is only
because of the considerable efforts of its editors that we are
now able to have both Robert's critical version of the text and,
perhaps more usefully, his detailed commentary on it. The acts of
the martyrdom of the priest Pionios and his companions were known
for a long time only in a longer and a shorter Latin version. The
original Greek text that lay behind these Latin versions was
discovered and published by von Gebhardt in 1896. Old Slavonic
versions and an Armenian one were discovered in the course of the
nineteenth century (the latter was published in 1914). A French
translation of the Old Slavonic text made by Andre Vaillant is
usefully included in an appendix.

     In his Warsaw paper, a modified version of which stands in
the place of an author's introduction, Louis Robert emphasized
the particular value of the martyr acts of Pionios as a
propitious route of connection between literary text and
archaeological data. He takes the archaeological records, above
all the specifics of epigraphical texts and numismatic data as
confirming the authenticity of the martyr acts. The Greek text
retails the events in the lives of the priest Pionios and his
followers--two women (one of them a fugitive slave) and two men
(one of them, like Pionios himself, a priest)--between their
arrest on 23 February 250 and their trial before the governor on
12 March of the same year. The Greek text itself clearly
indicates the date in the Decian persecution--but it has been
doubted. Robert's characteristically meticulous explication of
the numismatic evidence (on the peculiar city titulature of
Smyrna) and prosopography (on the identity of the Sophist
Rufinus) vindicates the date in the text against the spurious
claims of Eusebius of a date in the reign of Marcus Aurelius.
Indeed, Robert argues for a level of authenticity that postulates
an eyewitness source who actually saw the events as they happened
in the <i>agora</i> of Smyrna in the spring days of 250.

     Establishing the authenticity of the Greek text is important
not just for the 'historicity' of the events retailed in it, but
for the warnings that authenticity has for historical evaluations
of martyrological accounts in general. The Bollandists first
published the longer Latin version. Showing greater apparent
caution, Ruinart only deemed the briefer Latin version to be
worthy of his <i>Acta Sincera</i> (doubtless because brevity
seemed to be a touchstone of greater authenticity). That would
seem to follow a good methodological premise which would hold
that <i>acta</i> closer to the 'trial transcript' literary type
are more reliable than elaborated literary narratives. In point
of fact, it turns out that it is the longer Latin version which
most faithfully reproduces the Greek original. Even with this
Latin text, however, there has been a history of tampering, and
Robert has some interesting remarks on the 'censorship' of the
longer Latin <i>acta</i> prompted by bishop Lipomanus'
anti-protestant sentiments. His excisions (of chapters that might
reflect unfavourably on the catholic priesthood) are also found
in the Armenian version. Finally, in his presentation of the
Greek text Robert foregoes a technical <i>apparatus criticus</i>
in favour of a detailed exposition of the textual problems in the
commentary itself.

     The commentary is filled with the sort of fine attention to
detail for which Robert was particularly renowned, and is
therefore a treasure-trove of insights for students of the
political history of Rome in the East, relations between
Christians and Jews, the technicalities of Christian martyrdom,
and, in general, the cultural milieu of the cities of the Greek
east. The remarks, as always, are blunt and to the point, not
shrinking from correcting Mommsen (p. 108, on the governor's
tribunal) or reprimanding an errant English translation of the
text by Musurillo (Robert remarks on M.'s 'traduction lamentable'
and on his translation of <i>agoraios</i> as 'lawyer' as 'une
absurdite'). The latter judgements, of course, only serve to
emphasize the need for a 'new Musurillo' for all the early
Christian martyr acts, and not just for those of Pionios. To take
but a few examples of Robert's attention to detail, one can note
the exposition on the development in meaning of the verb
A)POLOGE/SQAI (p. 56, on c. 4.2--Robert's valuable comments on
such technical terms are easily accessed through a convenient
'Index des Mots Grecs'); his remarks on the nature of procedures
taken with those who were about to be executed (p. 115, on c.
21.1); and his forceful deployment of Pio Franchi de' Cavalieri's
work on the often gruesome details of punishment and execution
(e.g., p. 117). Whether in these matters or others, however,
Robert is at pains to show how the text offers a consistent
gateway to a better understanding of the topography and history
of Smyrna (plates i-v), and how a better knowledge of the site
and of the city's history in turn confirms the accuracy of the
acts. He even argues for the genuineness of Pionios' speeches
delivered in the <i>agora</i>, containing, as they do, small
coded references to the city of Smyrna and its history that only
Pionios' fellow citizens would fully understand and which are
therefore unlikely to be inventions of 'a fabricator of saints
lives' (p. 5). Problems of interpreting the distinction between
rhetoric and reality still remain. That dialogues between judges
and accused were commonplace, for example, is guaranteed by bare
'transcript' versions of the trials of Christian defendants. But
the form is so deeply entrenched in the literary genre of martyr
acts that even Robert admits that it is sometimes very difficult
to separate 'documentary' from 'imaginary' elements in these
texts (p. 105, on c. 19).

     One cannot complete a review of this book without returning
to a recognition of the work done by its editors. In her personal
prefatory note, Jeanne Robert comments on the magnitude of the
task of editing the mass of notes, annotations and marginalia
made by her late husband, admitting that such was a task 'qui
demandait pourtant un gros effort.' The evenness of the final
text perhaps disguises from the reader just how great an effort
that was. But there is some hint in her remark that her husband's
handwritten work 'etait en une ecriture et un style tres cursifs,
difficiles a dechiffrer souvent meme pour moi, avec des
abreviations parfois personnelles qu'il fallait elucider.' Having
had the opportunity (some years ago) to see some of the originals
from which this edition has been compiled, I can attest to the
accuracy of the observation. The gap between Robert's notes and
this beautifully and carefully presented final product is, in
some instances, considerable, but the transition is always
managed with a grace and a fineness of touch that preserves both
the tenor and the careful erudition of the original. The
painstaking work of reconstruction was undertaken by the editors
as an 'expression of gratitude to this great scholar.' Their
labour is therefore an act which Louis Robert would have
instantly recognized as one of the deepest values of the world
which he himself studied with such devotion and empathy--a
demonstration of <i>pietas</i>. It is difficult indeed to
envisage a final <i>envoi</i> from a scholar whose entire life
exemplified a quality of learning and scholarship that will
largely disappear with him and his generation. For, to modify the
true claim of the editors somewhat, Louis Robert was not just a
great scholar, but a <i>grand</i> one. Hence our debt to Glen
Bowersock and to Christopher Jones for their part in assuring
this fitting MNHMEI=ON KA/LLISTON.