Divine Fury (56 page)

39
. Seneca,
De tranquillitate animi
, 17.10 (“Nullum magnum ingenium sine dementiae fuit”); Longinus,
Peri hypsous
, 36.1–2.

40
. Varro is cited in St. Augustine,
City of God
, 7.13. Varro also speaks, with Platonic and Stoic inflections, of the individual
genius
as a microcosm of the great universal
Genius
(the “god who controls all that is begotten”), a world soul or cosmic mind. See the discussion in Nitzsche,
Genius Figure
, 24–26. See also Apuleius,
De Deo Socratis
, 15; Plutarch, “Marcus Brutus,” in the Dryden translation of
Plutarch’s Lives
, ed. Arthur Hugh Clough, 2 vols. (New York: Modern Library, 2001), 2:596–597; Servius, from his gloss on Virgil’s
Aeneid
, 6.743, cited and translated in Nitzsche,
Genius Figure
, 33.

41
. S. MacCormack, “Roma, Constantinopilis, the Emperor, and His Genius,”
Classical Quarterly
, 25, no. 1 (1975): 135–150.

42
. On Alexander as the first famous person and the line from Cicero, see Leo Braudy,
The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 32, 77.

43
. Max Weber,
Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology
, eds. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, 2 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 1:241. Weber discusses charisma at length in vol. 2, chap. 3, section iv, “Charismatic Authority,” and section v, “The Routinization of Authority.”

44
. Braudy,
The Frenzy of Renown
, 108.

45
. Suetonius,
Divus Augustus
, 93. Here I have cited from “The Deified Augustus,” in
Lives of the Caesars
, trans. Catharine Edwards (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 92.

46
. Plutarch, “Antony,” 33, in
Plutarch’s Lives
, 2:500–501. Shakespeare makes use of the account in
Antony and Cleopatra
, Act I, Scene 3. On Augustus and the gods, see the discussion in Gradel,
Emperor Worship
, 112–114; Franz Altheim,
A History of Roman Religion
, trans. Harold Mattingly (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1938), 368–369.

47
. Weber,
Economy and Society
, 1:243; Livy,
Ab urbe
, 21.62, in
Livy in Fourteen Volumes
, 5:186. Although Livy does not refer specifically in the cited passage to the Genius of the Roman People, writing only of a sacrifice to “Genius” (“et Genio maiores hostiae caesae quinque”), most scholars agree that he had one of these variously named collective
genii
of the Roman city in mind; see J. R. Fears, “Ho demos ho Romaion: Genius Populi Romani. A Note on the Origin of Dea Roma,”
Mnemosyne
31, no. 3 (1978): 274–286; Duncan Fishwick,
The Imperial Cult in the Latin West: Studies in the Ruler Cult of the Western Provinces of the Roman Empire
(New York: Brill, 1987), 1:52.

48
. See the extensive discussion of the libation and swearing of oaths in Lily Ross Taylor,
The Divinity of the Roman Emperor
(Middletown, CT: American Philological Society, 1931), 151–152 and 181ff. The impact and significance of the compital cults is treated thoroughly in Gradel,
Emperor Worship
, 116–128.

49
. On the debate over the existence of a state cult of the emperor during the reign of Augustus, see Gradel,
Emperor Worship
, chaps. 4–5; Taylor,
Divinity of the Roman Emperor
, 222–223; Ovid,
Fasti
, 5.145–146.

50
. Weber,
Economy and Society
, 1:244. Echoes of the
genius
of the Roman emperors endure well into the Middle Ages in the medieval notion of the king’s two bodies. See Ernst H. Kantorowicz,
The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997 [1957]), 80, 82, 501–504.

CHAPTER 2

1
. Eusebius,
The Ecclesiastical History
, trans. Kirsopp Lake, 2 vols., Loeb Classical Edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), 1:349.

2
. On the oath, see Rhona Beare, “The Meaning of the Oath by the Safety of the Roman Emperor,”
American Journal of Philology
99, no. 1 (1978): 106–110; Fergus Millar, “The Imperial Cult and the Persecutions,” in
Le Culte des souverains dans l’Empire romain
, ed. Willem den Boer (Geneva: Fondation Hardt, 1973), 145–165; Origen,
Contra Celsum
, 8.65, trans. Henry Chadwick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 502. For Tertullian’s comments on the
genius
of the emperor, see his
Apology for the Christians
, esp. chap. 32.

3
. This account, and all direct citations, are taken from Ambrose’s “Letter to Marcellina on Finding the Bodies of Sts. Gervasius and Protasius,” trans. H. de Romestin and Thomas Head, in the
Library of Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers
, 2nd ser., vol. 10 (New York, 1896), accessed March 30, 2012,
www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf210.v.viii.html
.

4
. Augustine,
Confessions
, 9.7, as translated by R. S. Pine-Coffin (Hammondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1961), 191. See also the brief account in
City of God
, 22.8.

5
. Ambrose, “Letter to Marcellina on Finding the Bodies,” 10. The line from the anniversary sermon is provided, along with an in-depth analysis on which I draw here, in Jean Doignon, “Perspectives ambrosiennes: SS. Gervais et Protais, génies de Milan,”
Revue des études Augustiniennes
2 (1956): 313–334.

6
. The decree of November 8, 392, outlawing sacrifices to
genius
may be found in the
Codex Theodosianus
, 16.10.12pr. On the persistence of the cult of the
genius
and pagan practices more generally, see Claude Lecouteux,
Démons et génies du terroir au Moyen Age
(Paris: Editions Imago, 1995), 43–44; Ramsay MacMullen,
Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997). The continuity between the cult of
genius
and the saint is analyzed in Peter Brown,
The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), esp. chap. 3 (“The Invisible Companion”).

7
. The judgment on Moses is that of the noted first-century BCE philosopher Philo, cited in Louis H. Feldman,
Philo’s Portrayal of Moses in the Context of Ancient Judaism
(South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 3. On the general relationship between heroes, prophets, and saints, see Geoffrey Cubitt’s concise and insightful “Introduction” to
Heroic Reputations and Exemplary Lives
, eds. Geoffrey Cubitt and Allen Warren (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 1–26; Peter Brown, “The Saint as Exemplar in Late Antiquity,”
Representations
1, no. 2 (1983): 1–25.

8
. A classic sociological statement of the continuum binding together the hero, the prophet, and the saint is Max Scheler’s
Vorbilder und Führer
, first published in 1933. On the classical and Christian ideal of the divine man, see Helmut Koester, “The Divine Human Being,”
Harvard Theological Review
78, nos. 3–4 (1985): 243–252.

9
. On the uses of
daimon
and
daimonion
and their Hebrew equivalents in scripture, see the article “δαίμψν, δαίμόνιον,” in
Theological Dictionary of the New Testament
, ed. Gerhard Kittel, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, 10 vols. (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1964–1976), 2:1–20; Tertullian,
Apology
, 22; Lacantius,
The Divine Institutes
, 2.15; Augustine,
City of God
, 8.16.

10
. As Robin Lane Fox observes succinctly, “paganism was reclassified as a demonic system.” See his
Pagans and Christians
(San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1988), 326.

11
. Peter Brown, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,”
Journal of Roman Studies
61 (1971): 81; Eric Sorensen,
Possession and Exorcism in the New Testament and Christianity
(Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2002); Augustine,
City of God
, 7.26.

12
. Theresa and Catherine were not canonized as
doctores
, however, until the 1970s. On the process by which doctors are chosen, see Lawrence C. Cunningham,
A Brief History of Saints
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 87–91; Jerome,
De viris illustribus
, “Introduction,” available at
www.newadvent.org/fathers/2708.htm
.

13
. Franz Cumont, “Les anges du paganisme,”
Revue de l’histoire des religions
72 (1915): 159–182; F. Sokolowski, “Sur le culte d’angelos dans le paganisme Grec et Romain,”
Harvard Theological Review
53, no. 4 (1960): 225–229. Of the vast literature on early Jewish conceptions of angels, W. G. Heidt’s
Angelology of the Old Testament
(Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1949), Michael Mach’s
Entwicklungstadien des judischen Engelsglauben in vorrabbinischer Zeit
(Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 1992), and Kevin P. Sullivan,
Wrestling with Angels: A Study of the Relationship Between Angels and Humans in Ancient Jewish Literature and the New Testament
(Leiden: Brill, 2004), provide useful introductions.

14
. The precise number of the angels was a question that obsessed Christian and Jewish investigators, particularly during the Middle Ages. Talmudic scholars apparently taught that the number could be calculated at 301,655,172, but the seventeenth-century German Jesuit Gaspar Schott wins the prize for computational innovation. In his
Magia universalis naturae et artis
(1657), he places the number of angels in the universe at 297,814,995,628,536,548,496,165,479,368, 800,000,000,000,000,000,000,000! See H. Leclercq, “Anges,” in
Dictionnnaire d’archéologie Chrétienne et de liturgie
, 15 vols. (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1907), vol. 1 (Part 2): 2154–2155. It is surprising that the relationship between the classical
genius
and Christian conceptions of angels has not been more fully explored. The most thorough study of the connection, to which I am indebted, is Robert Schilling, “Genius et anges,” in his
Rites, cultes, dieux de Rome
(Paris: Éditions Kincksieck, 1979), 415–441.

15
. Origen,
Homilies
, 12.4, in Origen,
Homilies on Luke; Fragments on Luke
, trans. Joseph T. Lienhard (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 49–50. On the persistence of a belief in a personal evil demon, see the entry “Diable,” in
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’Occident medieval
, eds. Jacques Le Goff and Jean-Claude Schmitt (Paris: Fayard, 1999), 260–272. Jerome is cited in Hugh Pope, “Angels,” in
The Catholic Encyclopedia
(New York: Robert Appleton, 1907), retrieved on July 18, 2011, from New Advent,
www.newadvent.org/cathen/01476d.htm
. For Jerome’s description of the angel as a
comes
, and on oaths and addresses, see Schilling, “Genius et anges,” 432–435; Brown,
Cult of the Saints
, 51; Peter Brown,
The Making of Late Antiquity
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 72, 121n64; H. Grégoire, “‘Ton ange,’ et les anges de Thera,”
Byzantische Zeitschrift
30 (1929–1930): 641–644.