Augustinianum

The name of Rufinus the Syrian (as presumed author of the Liber de Fide) is frequently given for the hitherto unidentified translator of part of the Vulgate New Testament. The evidence of the text of the Liber, however, does not support the claim that it is a witness to a Vulgate text. Furthermore, the biblical text in the Liber is frequently independent of even the Vetus Latina tradition, and shows close dependence on a Greek original. The use made of biblical proof-texts further points to Greek sources for the theology and anthropology presented in the Liber de Fide.

The article presents the first critical edition of Augustine’s Sermo Haffner 1, which is identical to Sermo Étaix 3, based on all nine known manuscripts andthe three printed editions. A thorough introduction to the transmission of the text, its variants and structure is added, also an ample apparatus fontium et testimoniorum, especially regarding the parallels from other works of St. Augustine, a German translation of the text, and a commentary on the majorpoints of interest.

Synchronic and diachronic philology is a necessary but insufficient condition for studying rhetoricians and philosophers of the Ancient world. Knowledge of formal logic in order to understand their works is also required. As a rhetorician-turned-philosopher Augustine not only utilized Stoic and Aristotelian logic but also exceeded the boundary of such formal languages using both original inference patterns unknown to such formal systems and disclosing new horizons to Western philosophy.

The earliest instance of φωτιστήριον « baptistery » in Antioch appears in the year 517, in a Syriac gloss to one of Severus’s homilies, perhaps in connectionwith his pastoral policies. Even if φωτιστήριον was formed according to same pattern as βαπτιστήριον, both nouns seem independent. John Chrysostom and an Antiochian Pseudo-Chrysostom do not mention at all the baptistery, but only the font (κολυμβήϑρα). The evidence indicates that during the 5th century φωτιστήριον was almost exclusively used in Constantinople and might have been created there. Some texts indicate that the word might have been the preferred name for the baptistery of a « cathedral » church, at least in Constantinople.