"Generative Authority" | FWF Start Award 2024The GenAut Project is devoted to the study of the network of late antique and medieval literary works – both apocryphal and hagiographic – with early Christian figures connected to apostles as main characters.
Secondary compared both to the apostolic figures they are connected to, and to later towering patristic authors like Gregory of Nazianzus or Augustine, the characters in this network are barely historical individuals which have nonetheless been literary productive figures.
In the case of Polycarp of Smyrna there are two martyrdom narratives independent from one another (one in Greek, the other in Coptic), a Greek life, and a late Byzantine panegyric; virtually only the Greek martyrdom garners scholarly attention. For Ignatius of Antioch there are several recensions of his martyrdom, none of them included among in the “apostolic fathers” writings. And at the same time, in the case of Thecla of Iconium there is an even larger and considerably more complex literary dossier composed between the second through the tenth century, which is far more widely copied than those of the other characters in the network.
The GenAut Project will provide the first systematic treatment of the development of the broader literature focused on apostolically-connected characters across several late-antique and medieval manuscript cultures.
More specifically, the GenAut team sets out to map out this development by examining how – beyond the literary works themselves – the apostolic connection is instrumentalised in the accompanying paratext of the manuscript cultures of the project (mainly Greek, Coptic, Syriac, and Armenian): superscript and subscript titles, introductions, colophons, and marginal notes.
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GenAut characters in paratext
The image below features a table of contents pasted to the binding of a Syriac martyrological collection focused on women from the end of the seventh century. The first text of the collection is the Acts of Thecla, and in the top right circle the title reads – emphasising her apostolic connection:
“First [the book] of the blessed Mart Thecla, the disciple of Paul the blessed apostle.”
The same is then repeated in the description of the collection on the top of Acts of Thecla, after the tables of contents: “Select narratives about holy women. First, the book about our blessed Mart Thecla, disciple of Paul the blessed apostle.”
This interesting manuscript (a palimpsest with this collection as the upper layer copied in 698) is Mount Sinai, Library of the Monastery of Saint Catherine, syr. 30; the image is produced by the Sinai Palimpsests Project, a publication of St. Catherine’s Monastery of the Sinai in collaboration with EMEL and UCLA.
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For another example, in the image below (and the background image of the website) one can see the beginning of the Coptic Martyrdom of Ignatius in Coptic as found in P.Vindob. K 7588, a parchment fragment of the ninth century from the White Monastery, where the ornate superscript title reads, linking Ignatius to the apostolic times:
“The martyrdom of saint Ignatius Theophoros (who is the bearer of God), who was the archbishop in Antioch after the predication of the apostles. He suffered his martyrdom in Rome on the seventh day of Epip (July) during emperor Trajan.”
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The GenAut project is funded thanks to the FWF START 2024 Award by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), and is hosted by the University of Vienna, at the Institute of Church History, Christian Archaeology and Ecclesiastical Art, 2024–2029. | Grant DOI 10.55776/STA214