Hesychius of Jerusalem

Venerable Hesychius of Jerusalem (Hesychios, also called Hesychius the Priest) was a priest and interpreter of Holy Scripture in Jerusalem, in the first half of the fifth century. Nothing certain is known of his life, but his writings, preserved in part, in Greek, Latin, Armenian and Georgian, brought him fame as a great teacher of the Church. He is commemorated on 28 March (10 April by the new calendar).

What is known of him

There are no certain data on Hesychius's birth and death, nor on the events of his life. Bearing the title "presbyter", that is, priest, he is not to be confused with Bishop Hesychius of Jerusalem, contemporary of Gregory the Great. Russian tradition calls him a disciple of Saint Gregory the Theologian, which does not fit the time he lived, and says he was born in Jerusalem. After his teacher's death he was tonsured a monk and withdrew to a monastery of Palestine, then moved to Jerusalem, where he was ordained priest by the archbishop of Jerusalem in 412.

Theophanes the Confessor mentions him in his Chronography. Cyril of Scythopolis, author of the lives of many saints of that time, calls him "teacher of the Church and theologian known from afar". The same Cyril, in the Life of Saint Euthymius the Great, says that at the consecration of the lavra, after the patriarch had ordained Domitian and Domnus deacons, Euthymius rejoiced in spirit, especially seeing beside the patriarch Passarion of Abraham and the theologian Hesychius, two brilliant lights shining throughout the world. Hesychius accompanied Patriarch Juvenal of Jerusalem (422 to 458) on his visit to the monastery of Saint Euthymius in 428. Patriarch Photius, in his Library, speaks of Hesychius's great spiritual and theological wisdom.

He confessed the faith of the Church, expressed in the Nicene-⁠Constantinopolitan Creed, under the strong influence of the teaching of Saint Cyril of Alexandria, and opposed Nestorianism. His death is placed, according to sources, between 432 and 434, by others in the year of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, 451, and other sources give 440.

Writings

His writings have been lost in part and in part transmitted and edited as the work of other authors, and some still lie in libraries, in manuscript. Whoever wants to collect his fragments must go back to the manuscripts, because in Migne's edition of the Fathers the writings of various authors named Hesychius are mixed without order under the title "Hesychius, Presbyter of Jerusalem". About half of what is found there must be set aside. The commentary on Leviticus, preserved entire only in Latin, is however certainly his, though its biblical text has been aligned to the Vulgate, not the Septuagint. The collection of ascetic maxims is the work of Hesychius of Sinai, not of his namesake of Jerusalem. One source says that the work "On Watchfulness and Holiness" in the Philokalia is his; present research attributes it to Hesychius the Sinaite.

A comprehensive critical edition of the homilies, authentic and spurious, transmitted in Greek under his name was published by Michel Aubineau. Certainly Hesychius wrote consecutive commentaries on Leviticus, the Psalms and Luke (perhaps chapter one) and scholia on the Twelve Minor Prophets, Isaiah and Ezekiel. His name appears in catenae for isolated scholia on texts of other books. The most perplexing problem is his connection with the three commentaries on the Psalms attributed to him. Spanish manuscripts clearly distinguish between Hesychius the Monk, author of the commentaries on the Psalms and the Canticles, and Hesychius the Priest. In 1900 it was shown that the commentary on the Psalms included among the works of Saint Athanasius is in fact Hesychius's glossary, issued under a pseudonym. A complete commentary on the Canticles of the Old and New Testament is preserved in manuscript. An Armenian interpretation of Job, under the name of Hesychius of Jerusalem, was published with a French translation in 1983. The scholia on the Twelve Minor Prophets, in six manuscripts at Rome, Paris and Moscow, were published by Mats Eriksson. The commentary on Isaiah was discovered in 1900 in the anonymous marginal notes of an eleventh-⁠century Vatican manuscript, with 2,860 scholia. Scholia on the Magnificat and manuscripts at Paris and Athos show that he left a commentary on the Gospel of Luke, at least on chapter one. The list of writings mentioned in the Russian sources also includes an "Ecclesiastical History", "Sentences", the "Gospel Symphony", of which only a short form survives, called "Collection of Difficulties and Solutions", and "Chapters" on Isaiah and the Twelve Prophets.

Method and importance of the interpretation

Judging from the surviving fragments, scattered and translated into Armenian, Georgian and Latin, Hesychius must have been a very prolific author on the interpretation of Scripture, especially of the Old Testament. The notice in the Greek Menaion at 28 March, in which the interpretation of the whole Scripture is mentioned, can refer to no one but him. In hermeneutics he follows closely the allegorical and mystical method of the Alexandrians: he finds in every sentence of the Bible a mystery of dogma and reads into the texts of the Old Testament the whole complex of ideas of the New. Like Origen, he chooses as the form of interpretation the shortest marginal gloss.

On Isaiah 19:1, "the Lord will ascend upon a swift cloud and will enter into Egypt", he says: "Christ in the arms of the Virgin". Water always means for him the mystical water, of baptism, and bread the mystical table, of the Eucharist. This strongly allegorical and glossing method is his peculiar trait and helps literary critics to distinguish his writings from spurious ones. The polemical tone toward the Jews in many scholia may be explained by local circumstances, as it is natural for an interpreter in Jerusalem to make geographical allusions to the holy places of Palestine. His importance for textual criticism lies in the fact that many of his paraphrases reproduce the wording of his model and, above all, in his frequent citation of variants from other columns of the Hexapla, especially those of Symmachus, by which he saved many rare variants.

He also matters in biblical stichometry. His "Chapters" and commentaries show the early Christian division into chapters, at least of the Twelve Minor Prophets and Isaiah, which follows the inner sequence of ideas better than the present division. For certain books Hesychius established an original stichic division. The "citizen of the Holy City" (hagiopolites), cited in the oldest manuscripts of catenae on the Psalms and the Canticles, is Hesychius of Jerusalem himself. Giovanni Mercati discovered that in some manuscripts the initial letter of each of Hesychius's divisions is marked in colour. Hesychius must have been generally known as an authority, since he is quoted simply as the Hagiopolite or by the phrase "he of Jerusalem".