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Moreover, Logan’s work is a fine introduction to the theology

and logic of the Proslogion as well as a needed analysis of its
reception since the Middle Ages.

doi:10.1093/jts/flq082 MATTHEW BARRETT

Advance Access publication 3 June 2010 The Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary
MBarrett@sbts.edu

Nicéphore Blemmydès: Œuvres théologiques. Tome 1. Edited

by MICHEL STAVROU. Pp. 363. (Sources chrétiennes,
517.) Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2007. ISBN 978 2
204 08515 1. Paper E35.
MONK–SCHOLAR, philosopher, and theologian, Nikephoros
Blemmydes (1198–c.1269) is a grand intellectual personality of
the Byzantine thirteenth century. His theological works, pub-
lished in this first volume of the Sources chrétiennes edition,
touch on several questions about the Holy Trinity and primarily
the procession of the Holy Spirit. Blemmydes developed his re-
flection for about thirty years. By the use of the Greek Fathers,
he oVers a rich synthesis of the theology of the Holy Spirit in
Byzantium between Photius and Gregory Palamas. Blemmydes
reflects, on a second level, the dialogue with the Latins. By ele-
vating the eternal relation between the Father and the Holy
Spirit, by confirming, according to the Church Fathers, that
the Holy Spirit ‘proceeds from the Father through the Son’
(2k toA atr1" di1 toA 3oA), he attempts to reformulate the ini-
tial intuition of the theologians’ actual preoccupations, engaged
with the dialogue between the churches.
Nikephoros Blemmydes is perhaps mostly known nowadays
for his autobiographical work, the Partial Account, which was
edited and translated by Joseph Munitiz in the 1980s. In his
own day he was well known, renowned as a ‘philosopher’
(which in his case can be rendered as ‘learned ascetic’), a mo-
nastic founder, a respected theologian, and—in his own eyes, at
least, as appears from the Partial Account—a saint. Evidence of
his theological learning is contained in the Partial Account, but is
better evidenced in his various short theological works, now
edited for the first time and translated into French by Michel
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Stavrou, Professor at the Orthodox Institut Saint-Serge in Paris.

Blemmydes was involved in the theological discussions that took
place after the Fall of Constantinople in 1204, leading up to the
Council of Lyon, held in 1274, after his death. These discussions
mostly concerned the question of the Filioque, the addition to the
Western text of the Nicene Creed that aYrmed the double pro-
cession of the Spirit from both Father and Son.
With no doubt the study and the critical edition of
Blemmydes’ theological treatises by Professor Stavrou is a ser-
ious contribution to the diachronic theological dialogue about the
question of the Filioque. The study is divided in two main parts:
a long and detailed introduction and the text, its editio princeps,
and an annotated commentary on four short theological treatises
by the monk of Emathia. The introduction is divided in seven
chapters concerning the personality, the theological oeuvre, and
the theological doctrine of Nikephoros Blemmydes. In his long
and learned introduction Stavrou does argue that we find in
these treatises an attempt, not simply to reject the Filioque, but
to engage with the problem of the eternal relationships within
the Trinity. Blemmydes is based on the early Church Fathers
and especially on Cyril of Alexandria and Maximos the
Confessor—who aYrm that the Spirit proceeds from the
Father (2k toA atr0") through the Son (di1 toA 3oA), which
Maximos explicitly regards as what the Latin theologians mean
by the Filioque—or drawing on the idea, found likewise in Cyril
and developed by John Damascene, that the Spirit ‘rests in’ the
Son. We must also refer to the extended bibliography which
covers a long period of theological and historical studies about
Blemmydes’ personality, oeuvre, and doctrine.
The texts presented here are documents connected mostly
with dialogues that took place in 1234 and 1250 and they are
careful defences of the Eastern position against the West. The
letter to an emperor, argued convincingly by Stavrou to be
Theodore II Laskaris, contains an extended discussion and de-
fence of the expression ‘through the Son’. Already Blemmydes is
criticizing the West for reliance on syllogistic argument, rather
than on the authority of Scripture and tradition, though he avails
himself of deductive argument. The texts here are very short,
and might seem too slender a basis for very high claims for
Blemmydes’ theological acuity, but the history of engagement
between East and West between the Fall of Constantinople and
the Council of Lyon is little understood.
To sum up, this amazing study oVers us a detailed account of
the Byzantine theology of the Filioque in the last centuries of the
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Byzantine empire, and together with the promised companion
volume sheds light on various late Byzantine theological matters
where there has been little hitherto.

doi:10.1093/jts/flq139 SPYROS PANAGOPOULOS

Advance Access publication 7 September 2010 University of Patras
panagopoulosspyros@yahoo.com

Trinity and Creation. Edited by BOYD TAYLOR COOLMAN

and DALE M. COULTER. Pp. 428. (Victorine Texts in
Translation: Exegesis, Theology and Spirituality from
the Abbey of St Victor.) Turnhout: Brepols, 2010. ISBN
978 2 503 53458 9. E60.
THIS collection of translated ‘extracts on a theme’ is a good idea
for a number of reasons. Despite the considerable expansion in
‘Victorine’ studies in recent decades the Victorine phenomenon
as a whole is still diYcult to characterize. To select the thoughts
on a single major theme of Christian theology from the work of
60 years at St Victor constitutes in itself a form of stock-taking.
Were these writers in any sense a ‘school’ and, if so, in what
sense? The question about the nature of ‘schools’ of this period,
raised by Sir Richard Southern nearly half a century ago in
connection with the ‘School of Chartres’, has still not really
been answered. Yet it is a question of huge importance for this
period, which was to end with the invention of universities.
St Victor was not simply a monastic school. Yet it did not go
the way of the cathedral schools whose higher education enter-
prises gave rise to a world of study in which universities were
born. Why not? Was it policy or accident? The projected series
of translations of which this forms the first volume may throw
new light on that question.
Selected for translation are portions of texts which have
modern editions: Hugh of St Victor’s De tribus diebus and the
early Sententiae de divinitate; Adam of St Victor’s Sequences; and
Richard of St Victor’s De Trinitate. Each work is provided with
its own introduction, setting it in context both within the au-
thor’s known work, and in the conspectus of twelfth-century
debate on the great favourite twelfth-century themes of Trinity
and creation. There is Hugh the educator and systematizer.
Adam’s sequences provide a glimpse of the twelfth-century
recognition that a liturgy expresses a theology. Richard of