Pinakes | Πίνακες

Résumé :

John Chrysostom’s commentary In Iohannem consists of eighty-eight homilies and was transmitted through more than three hundred known manuscripts. Most of the witnesses containing either the whole series, or the first or second part of the series, also make mention of titles that were given to the hortatory part of each homily – the ethicon. For example, at the beginning of the ethicon of the third homily, the text in the margin reads Περὶ ἐλεημοσύνης, ‘About alms’ and in homily 45 Ὅτι ἡ τῆς ἀναστάσεως καὶ κρίσεως μνήμη τὰς ἀτοποὺς ὁρμὰς ἐκκόπτει· καὶ περὶ εἱμαρμένης καὶ ὅτι ἐγγὺς τὸ τέλος, ‘That remembering the resurrection and judgement cuts out improper impulses; about fate and that the end is near’. These titles are not laid out in the same way nor mentioned systematically in the witnesses. The introduction and first part of this paper will present a corpus of manuscripts, whether or not there are ethica titles and the various ways the ethica titles are displayed. Is it possible to determine their origin? One can determine at least their earliest occurrence in the witnesses. Moreover, in order better to understand the making of John Chrysostom’s work, the second part will explore ancient clues that, from the outset, the hortatory part of his homilies were identified as distinct from the exegetical part. A complementary approach shows that later editors seem to have considered that ethica titles were due to a redactional intervention, and not worth printing. Moreover, these titles sometimes differ from one manuscript to another. Through examples and short analyses, the third part of the paper aims to answer two more questions: what are the main variations? Can specific families of manuscripts be distinguished through the titles of the ethica? This paper draws preliminary conclusions about our study of ethica titles in a sample of manuscripts.