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Postscript

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2011

Arthur Darby Nock
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Extract

This invocation of the ‘soul gods’ or ‘divine souls’ to receive Terentius, and the material which Welles has collected in illustration of it, may have a bearing on the ordo commendationis animae. The form of the Rituale Romanum, reprinted in each volume of the Breviary, includes one prayer with these words

Suscipiat eum sanctus Michael Archangelus Dei … Veniant illi obviam sancti Angeli Dei et perducant eum in civitatem caelestem Jerusalem. Suscipiat eum beatus Petrus Apostolus, cui a Deo claves regni caelestis traditae sunt. Adjuvet eum sanctus Paulus Apostolus.…

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , April 1941 , pp. 103 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1941

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References

1 Le Pontifical romain au Moyen-Âge I (Studi e teste LXXXVI), 281: here the suscipiat is found but not as part of the present prayer Delicta juventutis … (which stands in Breviarium Gothicum, P. L. LXXXVI 984. I know nothing of the age of its form as printed. L. Gougaud, Rev. bénédict. XLVII (1935) 9 n. 1, gives no evidence for Delicta juventutis earlier than 1512: and his control of the material is unrivalled).

2 Epist. 15 (P. L. 144, 497–8), a fact noted by L. Gougaud, Ephemerides Liturgicae, XLIX (1935), 12, in his full and admirable discussion of commendatio animae. The Reverend Professor J. Quasten of the Catholic University of America, to whom I am much indebted for generous help, drew my attention to this paper.

3 The so-called Orationes Cypriani (W. Hartel, Cypriani Opera, III 144 ff.), though not associated with the moment of death, present an early specimen of this type of prayer: cf. A. Baumstark, Oriens Christianus, N. S. IV (1915), 298 ff. on the pervasive character and wide extension of analogous prayer and typology. For the evidence (including that in Celtic), cf. Gougaud, Eph. Lit. XLIX (1935), 3 ff.

4 Leclercq in Cabrol-Leclercq, Dict. d'arch. chrét. et de liturgie, IV 445: E. Diehl, Inscr. lat. chr. 2376: Dessau 1738 receptus ad deum (probably Christian).

5 Tertull. Exhort, cast. 11 (of living and dead); Ambrose Ep. 39. 4 (XVI 1099 Migne), De excessu fratris sui Satyri I 80 (ibid. 1315).

6 Luke 23. 46. Professor Campbell Bonner sends me word of a funerary stele, of limestone, 26.5 cm. high, 24 cm. wide, inventory number excavated by the University of Michigan expedition under E. E. Peterson in a cemetery of 5–6th century at Kom Abu Billu, the ancient Terenuthis; it shows an orans in a small gabled structure, column on each side, low pediment above (now broken away): at level of her feet are a cat in the left corner, a hawk in the right; the inscription runs ЄICXIPENILZ which Professor Bonner interprets — surely aright — as εἰς χῖρ <ας Ἰρ> ένι (Εἰρίήνη) ἐτῶν ἑπτά. Professor Bonner has further remarked on the frequency of liturgical echoes in Coptic epitaphs, e.g. in H. R. Hall, Coptic and Greek Texts of the Christian Period from ostraka, stelae, etc., in the British Museum.

7 Cf. Strack-Billerbeck ad. loc. For reception by Jesus, as in Acts 7. 59, cf. Diehl, Inscr. chr. lat. 2009.1, Th. Ruinart, Acta sincera (1859 reprint), 434.

8 Cf. F. Cumont, Rev. Arch. 6th Ser. XIII (1939), 26 ff. and in Pisciculi … Franz Joseph Dölger … dargeboten, 70 ff.; also J. Bidez-F. Cumont, Les mages hellénisés, II 283 n. 2.

9 Cumont, Pisciculi, 75. Cf. also Acta Thomae 22 (Lipsius-Bonnet, Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha II ii 135), the prayer of Macrina in Greg. Nyss., Vita S. Macrinae (P. G. XLVI 984D), and Visio Pauli passim (e.g. 14 p. 131 ed. Silverstein; M. R. James, Apocryphal New Testament, 531), references which I owe to the kindness of Professor Quasten: Joh. Chrysost. De sacerdotio VI 4 (P. G. XLVIII 681) the prayer of Melania quoted by Quasten, Röm. Mitt. LIII (1938), 63: Leclercq, Dict. I 524 ff., 1514, 1517 f.: R.-S. Bour in Dict. théol. cathol. III 472 f. for representations of holy figures meeting the dead person: M. R. James, The Testament of Abraham, 129 f. and ibid. 14 ff. for the presence of good and evil angels at death and a judgment of the individual. In Tertull. De anima 53 the soul knows its destiny de ipsius statim angeli facie: in Goar, Euchologion (ed. 2) 432 ὅτε ἐĸ τοῦ σώµατος ψυχὴ μέλλει µετὰ βίας ἁρπᾶσθαι ὑπὸ ἀγγέλων ϕριĸτῶν refers to any dead man, not just to the wicked.

10 Peterson, Das Buch von den Engeln, 72 f.

11 Ed. H. A. Wilson, 296. For parallel texts cf. L. Gougaud, Rev. bénédict. XLVII (1935), 9 f.

12 Ed. M. Férotin (Cabrol-Leclercq, Mon. eccles. liturg. V), 112. The Reverend E. C. Ratcliff has kindly drawn my attention to the importance of Spain in the development of this type of prayer, and of Irish monks in disseminating Spanish forms: it is to be hoped that he will give a full treatment of the theme.

13 Ed. A. B. Kuypers, 80 f. with the appendix of E. C. Bishop: F. Cabrol, Dict. arch. chrét. III 3309.

14 Note also p, 132 ‘and dost welcome the spirits that are gone to rest:’ for the Armenian rite cf. n. 24 later.

15 H. Denzinger, Ritus Orientalium Coptorum, Syrorum et Armenorum in administrandis sacramentis (Würzburg, 1864), II 490, 501 — quotations which I owe to the kindness of Professor Quasten. There is a prayer in the Armenian Communion of the Sick (Conybeare 117), ‘Let us ask of the Lord for the angel of peace to be guardian of our souls’.

16 I have been unable to see B. Capelle's article, maintaining an origin in an Ambrosian form, probably of the fifth century (Les Questions liturgiques et paroissiennes, VIII (1923), 161 ff.): cf. Jahrbuch f. Liturgiewissenschaft, III 218, IV 330, and contra VII 301, VIII 297 f., XIV 296. The date sounds very bold.

17 Ketubot 104a (L. Goldschmidt, Der Babylonische Talmud, IV 801). The translation here given is due to the kindness of Professor H. A. Wolfson, who adds this note: “According to another reading of the text the words ‘to meet him and let him enter’ are to be translated as follows: ‘to meet him. And they say to him [that] he may (or shall) enter….’ It is not clear whether the underscored they say in this reading refers to the ‘ministering angels’ or to the ‘righteous men’”. — Cf. the reception of Vibia among the righteous after she had been led in by the Good Angel. F. Cumont, Les religions orientales (ed. 4), 61 fig. 3.

18 Hyperid. Epitaphios, 35: Themistius XX p. 234 C (p. 286. 26 ff. Dindorf) where δῆμος ἀγαθῶν δαιµóνων is parallel to the epitaph on Terentius: IV Macc. 13. 17 (cf. p. 84 n. 19 above) is a transformation of the ‘slept with his fathers,’ of Kings and Chronicles, into this style. For an early parallel cf. P. Jacobsthal, Metropolitan Museum Studies IV (1934–6), 130 f. on his Nekyia vase.

19 Diehl 2500 B.

20 Das Buch von den Engeln, 74.

21 Diehl 2009 and cf. the vision in Passio S. Perpetuae 11 (O. von Gebhardt, Ausgewählte Märtyreracten, 80) qui (angeli) ubi viderunt nos honorem nobis dederunt, et dixerunt ceteris angelis: Ecce sunt, ecce sunt, cum admiratione. Yet this motif is notably rare in such accounts of the deaths of martyrs and saints as I have read. Sulpicius Severus Epist. III 16 (to which Professor Bernard Peebles drew my attention) makes the dying Martin say Abrahae me sinus recipit — but he says it to the Devil, who has appeared: and Martin while alive was regarded as a saint.

22 Epitaphia 20 (P. G. XXXVIII 20): H. Delehaye, Le culte des martyrs, 134.

23 Delehaye 161 ff.: Diehl 3360. 7, 3483. 5; Ruinart 475 f.

24 Cf. J. Quasten, Röm. Mitt. LIII (1938), 53 ff.: M. Bloomfield, HTR XXXIV (1941): also L. Gougaud, Rev. bénédict. XLVII (1935), 9 f. on repelle ab ea (i.e. anima: or eo) (omnes) principes tenebrarum in the formula cited p. 105 above; Pseudo-Mellitus in Fabricius, Codex apocryphus Novi Testamenti, III 622, principes tenebrarum non occurrant mihi; Conybeare, Rituale Armenorum, 131 ‘And now do thou heal his wounds, and convey him peacefully past the principalities of darkness, lest they should find their own wickedness in thy servant. Nay rather blot out, O Lord, and efface the handwriting of their influences and inworkings, which they have sown in him, and vouchsafe to him a goodly journey’, 133. ‘And let not any filthy and unclean devil presume to approach him, such as assail the body and souls of the heathen, who possess not the birth of the holy font, and have not the dread seal laid upon their graves. But thy servant here who has been called and invited by thy ambassadors, and who believed in thee in his lifetime….’ For a later period cf. Geiger in Handwörterbuch deutschen Aberglaubens (ed. Bächthold-Stäubli), VIII 455.