Формирование авторитетного высказывания на рубеже Античности и Средневековья

Abstract

This article examines Canon 13 of the Second Council of Seville (619), a short anti-Monophysite treatise composed of biblical and patristic quotations. Taking this text as a case study, it addresses the mechanisms by which authoritative theological utterances were constructed at the transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. The article first provides a general overview of the canon's structure, which, it is argued, cannot be reduced to a simple “Scripture versus Tradition” model. Biblical quotations appear as testimonia, that is, witnesses endowed with absolute authority by virtue of their divine origin and accepted unconditionally as a matter of faith. By contrast, the judgments (sententiae) of the Church Fathers are associated with argumenta: the products of human rational reflection, grounded in biblical testimony and delimiting the range of permissible interpretations of the biblical text. These sententiae acquire a special authority and the status of second-order testimonia when gathered into a chronologically organized florilegium that embodies Tradition and the line of transmission of the apostolic rule of faith from its divine source. The article further demonstrates the use of methods characteristic of Isidore of Seville and related to grammatical categories, above all differentia and etymologia. The “etymological,” or, more precisely, “genealogical,” narrative situates Canon 13 within the framework of Tradition. Finally, brevity (brevitas) serves as a key means of condensing earlier textual authority and making the text as persuasive as possible. Moreover, in both its brevity and its functions, the theological utterance may be likened to the Creed. The combination of intellectual procedures described here, employed in the formation of an authoritative utterance, appears to be in many respects characteristic of Visigothic Spain in general and of Isidore of Seville in particular.