The Greek Mystery Religions in St. Gregory of Nazianzus. 1
John A. McGuckin
The religio-philosophical concept of initiation into ‘the Mysteries’ was widespread in the world of Antiquity and, by the time of the early Christian period, represented an aspect of Hellenic religion that marked out ancient rituals of religious piety which self-characterized as highly traditional, intellectually elevated, mystically sophisticated, and socially ascendant. Mystery religion was, of course, not one coherent thing by any means, but a related nexus of cults 2 that, in the time of Late Antiquity, when it overlaps with the age of the Apostles and the early Fathers, also collided with much of the religious zeitgeist that saw the rise of more socially modest (by which I mean more populist) religious movements that we have come to characterize as ‘gnostic’ in temperament and highly eclectic in their ideological structures.
The Cappadocian fathers certainly represent those characteristics mentioned earlier namely: traditional, intellectual, mystically inclined and socially ascendant. Accordingly it is not surprising, at this time and in this early Byzantine social context when many members of the ruling élite were Christians but extensive numbers remained as socially influential Hellenes, that this highly placed nexus of Christian writers should make reference to the notion of the ‘Mysteries’: at the very least in terms of an illustrative analogy. Gregory the Theologian is the member of the group who most explicitly uses such an analogy, and generally does so in the context of arguing that the Christian rites, as means to ascend to the vision and understanding of God, are actually superior to the Hellenic mysteries which were a demonic parody of them (this daimonic theme which had been sustained by the early Apologists was traditional by Gregory’s time). 3
Even so, in the late fourth century, Gregory has a difficult case to make that Christianity is more traditional, more mystically elevated, more akin to divine ‘secrets’, and more sophisticated than the Hellenic cults. It was a claim that the pagan sophists in general, and Julian in particular (who had so publicly renounced his Christianity in favour of the ancient Mysteries), mocked as self-evidently fallacious. For Julian, and others, Christianity was recent, untraditional, and publicly low-class, as its rites were open to the uneducated masses. Gregory, therefore, has some work to do to make his case convincing, and it would be, I suggest, only to the upper and literary classes that he would even wish to make this case: for it was that upper class of uncommitted citizens in the newly Christianized empire, who would need to be wooed and charmed into considering belonging to a Church that seemed to so many of them to be nouveau arriviste.
Of course, when Gregory applies the analogy and comparison of Christianity to the Mysteries he has the authority of the Apostle Paul before him; who is the first of the Christian authors to use the idea of salvation (Soteria) as an initiation into a mystery (and in Paul’s case this is a deliberate evocation of the language of the pagan mysteries). The Apostle adopts this language, so it seems to me, as a missionary strategy to put across the idea of the believer’s transcendent incorporation into the Risen Christ. A similar missionary strategy of outreach would also seem to be applicable to Gregory, working in Constantinople, for it is in two of his writings, sent to or delivered in the imperial city, that his most explicit references to the Mysteries can be seen.
Paul’s dominant motifs in using the analogy of the Mysteries were designed to bring out the concept of how something hidden in an ineffable silence (to Mysterion), reserved even from the spiritual powers (daimones) who have greater cognizance than mere mortals, is now made manifest (by divine epiphaneia) across the Cosmos. Paul characterizes this not as a secret that belongs to the Hellenes, rather God’s decision to manifest the fulfilment (teleiosis, pleroma) of His eternal plan (oikonomia), namely His dominion (basileia) over the Cosmos now to include the gentiles, by means of the dispensing of that Wisdom (Sophia) which the prophets had foretold, and the giving of the glory (doxa) of immortality (athanasia) to the elect. In making this nexus of argument, in a series of repeated instructions to his newly founded churches, Paul has clearly raided the specific technical vocabulary of the mystery cults, in order to argue, in language recognizable to a gentile audience, a rather startling conclusion: that the ‘Mystery of Christ’ has now broken apart the bonds of secrecy and élitism that the Hellenistic cults once fostered, and that God has intervened to demonstrate his own ‘secret’ plan of salvation but which is now made discernible for all in the fullness of time (oikonomia tou pleromatos ton kairon). Paradoxically, therefore, Paul employs language of the Mysteries to dismantle the fundamental concept of the secret and exclusive initiation that is at their heart. This whole nexus of the apostolic teaching is contained in a few densely ‘symbolic’ (that is quasi credal) texts.4 The Apostle’s strategy is brilliantly, and wittily, summed up in his simultaneous use and contradiction of the fundamental creed (symbolon) of the Mystery cults: which turned around the strict command given to the initiate to keep silent about what the Mystery involved (muein: such silence being the core semantic meaning of Mysterion); for on no less than four explicit occasions Paul quite shockingly says: ‘So now, I am going to speak out the mystery.’5
Gregory the Theologian’s knowledge of these Apostolic texts 6 can be presumed as a given. Did his own use of the analogy of Mystery religions simply echo that of Paul or did he go further? We can certainly take for granted in his case a far deeper immersion in the world of élite Hellenistic society and classical education than that which Paul possessed. Gregory was unquestionably one of the most educated Sophists of his age.7 In that leisured decade (348-358) when Basil of Caesarea and Gregory himself were studying rhetoric and philosophy at Athens they each had access to extensive ranges of documents. The libraries that existed at Athens belonged to the private schools of the most learned professors of rhetoric who congregated in this ‘university town’ of the Late Antique world. Both Gregory and Basil, however, were significantly wealthy men, ranking as kalokagathoi, and could command access to texts of their own choice, both made for them, and to be borrowed from the libraries of fellow students and professional sophists around them. This sharing of texts remained a feature of Gregory’s life: he both borrowed, and was borrowed from, as his later corpus of letters demonstrates.8
At Athens, Gregory was a student of Prohaeresios,9 the Christian Hellenist,10 and Gregory gives him the palm as the best of teachers in two epigrams he dedicated to his praise.11 One of Prohaeresios’ most renowned exploits was the famous Achillean ‘sulk in his tent’ where he pretended to resign because he felt slighted.12 Gregory the Theologian was obviously deeply impressed by this strategy of threatening resignation when in difficulty, though sadly, in his case, when he applied it at critical moments during his own priestly and episcopal career (such as when he fled from Nazianzus after his ordination, or when he occupied the ‘throne’ of Constantinople in the time of the Council of 381 and offered his resignation to the emperor Theodosios) no-one actually came calling, begging him to return. The emperor, indeed, brusquely accepted his resignation from the throne of Constantinople, much to Gregory’s chagrin, and the whole subtext of his Prohaeresian technique was not even recognized by the conciliar bishops, on whose culture Gregory pours scorn in several Orations.13 Everything, in short, backfired badly.
When Julian was a student at Athens he too respected Prohaeresios, but was closer to Himerios (whose lectures Gregory also possibly attended) and Himerios 14 was Julian’s sponsor in his admittance into the Eleusinian Mysteries. One wonders whether Himerios made the same offer to Gregory? If he did, the account Gregory later gives, of a Christianized form of those mysteries, in Carmen Lugubre and De Rebus Suis (which we shall look at shortly) we may take as his gracious refusal. Accepting Himerios’ sponsorship as his Psychopompos, Julian in turn persuaded Himerios to be admitted into the Mysteries of Mithras in which he himself was already initiated. Julian’s third great initiation into the Mysteries of the Great Mother Cybele, is cited by Gregory as his final act of renunciation of the mystery of his Christian initiation: ‘Through impious blood’, he writes, ’Julian washed away the waters of his baptism.’ 15 But Julian’s religious journey was more than a flirtation with secret rituals. He had long been close to the sophist Maximos,16 who had first inducted him into the practice of Theurgy. In his time at Athens when Gregory and Basil of Caesarea were there to witness it, he sought out the Iamblichean Neo-Platonist sophist Priscos, for instruction in the detailed processes of the mystical rites which would accelerate his intellectual purification and spiritual ascent.17 It was to Priscos he had first turned to ask for instruction in the teachings of Iamblichus, and from whom he would request a correct copy of the written works.18 So, Julian’s turning away from Christianity, and whatever claims it made to represent a higher wisdom than the Mysteries, had taken root much earlier than his Cybelean initiation, by 351 at least. Mystery initiation, therefore, was not merely a theoretical issue for Gregory but certainly, as his worried interaction with Julian can show 19, a perceived threat to the continued ascendancy of Christianity within the governing élite.
In short, by Gregory’s lifetime, it had become, a sophistic commonplace (at least among the late Platonists, Neo-Pythagoreans and Stoics)20 that the highest form of philosophical-sophistic insight was the personal, noetic-visionary experience of God: and it is in this light that we need to imagine how the analogy of Mystery initiation might be working: initiations representing the stages of the advance of the soul to noetic union with the divine principle: that stage of advancement such as Porphyry attributed to his teacher Plotinos. 21
Gregory demonstrates a massive amount of reading of the classics of the Hellenistic tradition across the corpus of his works. In 1930 Fleury 22 isolated the citations individually: Anaxilas, The Apollonine oracle, Apollonios of Rhodes, Aratos and poets of the Palatine Anthology, Aristotle, Aristophanes, Callimachos, Demosthenes, Diogenes Laertios, Evagoras, Heraclitos, Herodotos, Hesiod, Homer (many times), Isocrates, Lucian, Lysias, Philo, Phocylides, Pindar, Plato, Plutarch, Sappho, Simonides, Socrates, Theocritos, Theognis and Thucydides. Storin’s new edition of the Letters of Gregory lists the additional classical allusions of: Aeschines, Aeschylus, Aesop, Apollodoros, Dionysios of Halicarnassos, Diogenianos, Euripides, Pausanias, Philostratos, Polybius, Pythagoras, Sophocles, Sextus Empiricus, Solon, Sophron, Strabo, and Xenophon. Typically, the complete allusions to the classics form over one and a quarter pages of Storin’s index, compared to three full pages of Gregory’s biblical allusions in the Letters.23 Sykes, Wyss and Simelidis 24 have already demonstrated that Gregory’s biblical and classical allusions woven together form a deliberate and deep substrate to his whole manner of thinking. In other words Gregory’s biblical citations and his classical literary awareness are not merely window-dressing in his rhetorically crafted discourses, but actually serve to supply a context of synthesis from which he addresses the world: proposing Christianity as the progressive inheritor of the world’s wisdom traditions.
His genius, therefore (and he is undoubtedly the most important patristic thinker since Origen to do this), is to synthesize in a refined and judicious way the biblical Christian tradition, with selected and adapted parts of the Aristotelian and Platonic world-views. His Hellenism is serious and deep when it comes to metaphysics, but it is moderated by his acceptance of the revelatory tradition of biblicism, though he interprets this in a very oracular sense that is not too far away from what would seem normative to an intellectual pagan who was familiar with theurgy. In his extensive poetic output, still waiting to see a comprehensive critical edition in English, he consciously sets himself to address the longstanding tension in philosophical tradition concerning the value of poetic discourse: a serious endeavour which has not been recognized by so many critics who have addressed his poetry so far predominantly in terms of doctrinal history or literary allusions.
If Gregory has no worries at all about his ability to prove his intellectual and cultural equality, if not superiority, to any of his cultured contemporaries, how assured was he that his claim to noetic visionary experience of the divine could equal that claimed by contemporary sophist hierophants such as the late Julian who had actually built a new and splendid Mithraeum in the capital where he personally served as Hierophant? It is from this perspective then, of Gregory as a witness to a Christianized Hellenism, that it will be instructive to look once more at his references to the Greek Mystery tradition in his episcopal preaching.
Two chief instances of this in his writings stand out. The first is the reference to the Eleusinian mysteries 25 which he repeats in several versions, and which turns around the concept of Gregory himself being like a new Triptolemos (son of Keleos, the king of Eleusis). We find the context for this in reference to the great mysteries of Eleusis in a large surviving marble relief held in the National Museum of Greece.26 It was made of Pentelic marble (from Athens) and stood in the Eleusinian temple complex from the time of its creation between 440-430BC: a typical ‘giving away’ of, or allusion to, the secret of the mystery, to those who came to the temple precincts, but meaningful only to the initiated. A life-size copy of the same was made in early imperial Roman times, which is today reconstituted from fragments, in the Greek and Roman galleries of the Metropolitan museum in New York.27 The original size is phenomenal: 200cm upright by 152cm; so not a votive plaque but certainly a remnant of the cult items of the shrine.
The temple frieze shows Triptolemos, a human boy, standing between the goddesses Demeter and her daughter Kore (Proserpine). Demeter is the goddess of earth’s fertility, a symbol of life and its flourishing. Proserpine was, as we remember, a symbol of rescue from death. Having once been claimed as a bride by Hades, her mother froze the earth until her child was allowed to spend half her time back in the upper world: and at her advent Demeter released once more the signs of life in Spring and harvests. The myths are, of course, obscure, and convoluted, but the gist of the Eleusinian mystery seems to be that the human boy-prince, a small figure in the presence of the two deities, is here being ‘deified’; his humanity purged from him as he ascends into the ranks of the minor deities.28 He is set into a winged chariot drawn by heavenly serpents from which he will traverse the sky scattering seeds of grain and thus inaugurating agriculture on the face of the earth. The frieze depicts him receiving something from the senior goddess who holds a sceptre, while he clutches the hem of Kore’s robe, who holds the lit torch she carries in Hades. Kore also probably awards the young boy a crown of divine honour (not carved but possibly painted, or of beaten gold, on the original). The item given to him is probably an ear of wheat, which was possibly given to all the initiates in the secret parts of the shrine when they were initiated. If Hippolytos of Rome is correct 29 the candidates were given a ‘green ear of reaped wheat’ which represented their promised entrance into a beatific and protected afterlife as a result of their initiation.
By later times, Triptolemos comes to be seen in two ways that have particular relevance to the sophists of the Athenian schools in Late Antiquity. In the first instance the cult of the Eleusinian mysteries tends to be taken over by the Athenian scholars, when the great Procession from Athens to Eleusis, when the sacred Peplos (the antique ‘classical’ garment to be worn by the cult statue of Demeter) was solemnly carried to the shrine by the youths of Athens. This was a moment when the scholars of the various schools all took part; and many composed specimen orations (Panegyrics) to mark the occasion. It was also a time when some of the élite scholars were actually initiated in the mysteries, and as an event on the social calendar it had all the hallmarks of a kind of solemn university graduation and high-society coming-out occasion. In the second instance, the theology of the cult itself had taken on new emphases: or at least some of the ancient aspects had received a radical make-over from the sophists of Athens.
If the original mystery had begun as a celebration of the forces of life and regeneration (agriculturally based) then by the time of Gregory the focus had turned to the aspect of Triptolemos being advanced to semi-divine status. His humanity is burned off him by the goddesses. He moves from mortality to immortality (theiopoiesis). The later sophists regarded Triptolemos, therefore, as a classical example of a human being advancing to that status of noetic union with the gods, for which philosophy was the primary enabling medium. The Eleusinian connection was, therefore, a very important religious and philosophical symbol, particularly for Athenian scholars; almost a badge of boasting that one had attended the very best of schools, and knew what it meant to be a true sophist who had command of the classical literature and also a claim to mystery-insight: what we might even call mystical insight as to the nature of the ascent to immortal vision.
Now Christians were obviously precluded from entering several of those contexts. If they chose the mysteries for reasons of social ascendancy, then they necessarily rejected the church: as was the case with Julian. This appeared as something of a social setback to many of the rich Christians of the fourth century, and as a hindrance to the recruitment of the upper class pagans into the church. It is a hindrance that Gregory sets himself to remedy, because the second aspect mentioned, namely the manner in which the mysteries here represented a claim to noetic vision, seemed to the Christian intellectuals too important a claim to be ceded to the pagans. While the Christian traditions had always been historically ambivalent about the spiritual value of ‘seeing’ as opposed to ‘believing’,30 nevertheless, seeing if it was understood as spiritual insightfulness, was too critical a factor in religion to be left to pagan claims alone. Gregory determines to settle the score on this point.
He already has had the way to co-opt the pagan analogies shown to him by his teacher Prohaeresios 31 in the latter’s Oration 25; and also by an earlier classical text he must have read closely, namely the Somnium (Dream Book) of Lucian (c. 125- post 180), a noted litterateur of the second sophistic period. Lucian describes, in this quasi-autobiographical account 32 how, as a young boy after making a mistake in his uncle’s statuary workshop, he cried himself to sleep and had a dream in which two personified female forms, Rhetoric and Sculpture, appeared to him and he had the overwhelming desire to choose only Rhetoric as his life-long profession. Lady Rhetoric then takes him up in a flying chariot where, he says, he feels like a new Triptolemos. 33
For his part, Prohaeresios, Gregory’s sophistic mentor, also was once sent on behalf of Athens to the court of the emperor Constans in Gaul. His embassy to the palace and his orations there won him the reward of the land grant of several islands and their produce of grain for the benefit of Athens. When the Prefect of Illyrium confirmed that imperial edict, Prohaeresios gave an oration of thanks to him in which he compared himself to a new Triptolemos who in the contemporary age was spreading the seed of wheat among mankind. 34
Himerios, the other major sophist of the same era, was a constant rival of Prohaeresios. He took over Prohaeresios’ role as primary rhetorician of Athens as soon as the former had left the city. His own Oration 41 tries to undermine the great renown that Prohaeresios must have achieved by that successful representation of his city. Himerios tells us that when he was himself a young man he had given a rhetorical performance in Constantinople.35 The sophists of Athens were, of course, very eager to establish a connection between themselves and the new capital (with its new senate and court aristocracy), and to avail themselves of its patronage. In this performance he describes Athens as the ‘mother of learning’ who is now pleased to see Constantinople emulating her through the number of sophists who are established there. He describes himself as a personification of Athenian paideia who has now come to ‘spread the seeds of learning’: again the analogy of Triptolemos in the Eleusinian mysteries. He tells his audience that Fate did not lead him to give his gifts in the West (a negative allusion to Prohaeresios embassy to Emperor Constans in Gaul): ‘No’, he says, ‘Fate brought my learning, while still in its prime …. to you in Constantinople, so that it might weave a hymn for the city in its tender buds.’ 36 Thus he deliberately alludes back once more to his Oration 62 where he had also explicitly characterised himself as Triptolemos, the mythic hero of Eleusis who was the great benefactor of mankind. But this time he underlines how although Prohaeresios might have brought actual grain to his Athenian townspeople, he, Himerios, was an even better Triptolemos who brought the more refined seeds of Athenian paideia to the citizens of Constantinople.
All in all then, we see the theme of the Eleusinian metamorphosis of Triptolemos as a repeated topos among leading Athenian sophists of Gregory’s time, who use it to claim not only the ability to enrich others through their paideia, but also to assert their possession of epopteia, or visionary insight. Gregory himself uses the same allusion to a similar end in a set of poems he may have written earlier (after his time of study at Athens) but which he publishes as an apologia pro vita sua after he has been pressured to resign his occupancy of the episcopal (thus rhetorical) ‘throne’ of Constantinople.
The poem is a masterpiece of literary refinement and is the first instance of extended spiritual autobiography in Christian literature. It was designed as an apologetic riposte to his enemies who were circulating stories in Constantinople, after his departure from the council and the city in 381, that he was an incompetent leader. The main thrust of it is to show what the Constantinopolitans have lost (namely, himself) by being so ignorant and incompetent that they could not appreciate his gifts. 37 To those (one presumes rhetorical critics and episcopal enemies at the council) who complained that he was a ‘foreigner’ (a Cappadocian) he is at pains in these great autobiographical poems (De Rebus Suis and Carmen Lugubre)38 to show them in the text itself that he is the master of the classic Hellenic tradition. So it is he spends time beginning with his childhood and stating his pedigree as a reverent Christian kalokagathon, son of a bishop and a mother graced with prophetic gifts, and then moving on to his extended time of rhetorical studies in Athens. In this context he gives a discourse, like that of Lucian in the Somnium, on how he chose his way of life: namely that of an ’ascetic’. Christian readers would be able to read that as a monastic celibate; pagan readers as a devotedly philosophical rhetorician, that is, a sophist.
In what he says was a dream, or perhaps a ‘waking vision’ (and thus he connects it with the scriptural traditions of Joseph’s prophetic dreams) 39 two ladies solemnly dressed come to him in the night when he was a youth. 40 One is Virginity, the other Simplicity (Sophrosyne). They address him: ‘We stand within the presence of Christ the Lord, rejoicing in the beauty of the heavenly choir of virgins. But come now child and meld your mind with ours. Merge your lighted torch with ours until we bear you up on high, transfigured in the light, through the very Aether, to stand in the radiance of the Immortal Trinity.’ 41 Gregory makes every subtle allusion he can to the Mysteries of Eleusis while overall characterising the apparition as an epiphany of heavenly beings who focus his life’s vocation on monastic asceticism. The event is a photismos which is a strong indication he is probably referring to the fact that at Athens he decided both to be baptised (he was a catechumen when he first went there) and thereafter to adopt the ascetical lifestyle of the Philosophos-Monachos. So the primary level of assertion is that Gregory has completed his studies at Athens after ten years with the acquisition of wisdom, rhetorical excellence, professional commitment, and divine approbation and epiphany. His poem, excelling on all literary fronts as a masterpiece where he even weaves in otherwise unknown quotations from Sappho, is the very proof of all those things rolled into one. The Eleusinian assonances are also unmistakeable: the two maidens are like Demeter and Kore (the ‘Maiden’), and like them they are dressed in a closely described ‘Peplos’ (which was the archaic vesture of the cult statue of Demeter carried each year to her shrine at Eleusis by the youths of Athens). He is invited to join his torch flame with theirs (the pine cone on fire was an essential part of the Eleusinian ritual and symbolism) but in his case the heavenly figures are Christian angels, not underworld goddesses, and his fiery illumination is therefore transmuted into an admission into the gentle radiance of the Trinity. In short, Gregory’s ‘graduation’ as rhetor-philosopher-monk from the schools of Athens was indeed crowned with a sacred Mystery initiation to symbolize all his intellectual and spiritual achievements, but with the mystery of a Christian photismos, which was far superior to that of the Mysteries and Theurgies so desired by his pagan aristocratic contemporaries, Julian included. All this is a memory of his time in Athens, composed probably even as he was near to that event (perhaps in 360) but certainly it was revised and polished after he left Constantinople as its bishop in 381 and sent back to the capital as part of his large dossier of self-vindication texts (which included his long autobiographical poem De Vita Sua 42). It is this theme of the superiority of the Christian Mystery of Baptism-Photismòs to those of the Hellenic cults which is also seen in his Constantinopolitan preaching before the imperial court in the great cathedral.
Gregory’s second major cluster of reference to the Mysteries comes in the twin Orations Gregory offered on the occasion of the solemn ceremonies of baptismal consecration which he conducted in the great cathedral of Constantinople on the feast of Theophany, January 5th and 6th in 381. The evening or vigil oration on the 5th is listed as Oration 39 On the Holy Lights 43 (which we might better entitle ‘On Sacred Illumination’ since the Christian ‘mystery’ of Baptism and Chrismation (understood then as parts of one and the same sacramental ritual) is also commonly known as Photismos in the Eastern churches. Oration 40 On Holy Baptism was delivered the following morning of the 6th. This baptismal ceremony was an important one in three major ways for Gregory. In the first place it publicly confirmed his role as the acting senior bishop of the capital city: a role that several had protested as invalid: both the Arian senior clergy who had fled before the arrival of the Nicene Emperor Theodosios, and even numerous members of the Nicene clergy, such as the circle around Peter of Alexandria. But now, Theodosios, very recently baptized by the Nicene bishop of Thessalonica as an emergency clinicus candidate, had arrived in his capital and had set Gregory as the acting archbishop. He validated him irrefutably by attending the liturgical ceremonies himself. There can be no doubt but that he was also an intimate participant in the rites, because a clinicus baptism (one conducted quickly in case of illness) had the ritual elements that were omitted supplied with all formality later if the candidate survived. This is what is happening in the cathedral in January 381. Secondly it was an important event because Theodosios had just demonstrated his own potency as new emperor by receiving at this same time, the submission and obedience of Gothic rebels, in the person of their chieftain Athanarich. 44 He concretely symbolizes this by receiving Athanarich as his kinsman: namely by sponsoring the latter’s baptism at the same event at which he himself receives chrismation (photismos). Thirdly, of course, this is the supreme moment when Gregory can symbolically refute Arianism and supply his own Trinitarian doctrine. When the Arian incumbent of the capital Demophilos fled the city (taking most of the movable financial resources Gregory alleges) he took with him his senior clergy, but left behind the deacons of the cathedral. These were the very ones who had been preparing the other city candidates for baptism in the course of the previous Lent. Being Arian, they would certainly not have prepared the candidates for initiation into the Trinity (so much a feature of the orthodox baptismal formulae), and Gregory makes several references to how these deacon-catechists grumbled about what he was doing. 45
Even so, on all three points this baptismal ceremony became a showcase. If Theodosios associates Athanarich into his own family by means of the shared initiation, Gregory brings the point home fully: those who enter into these Christian mysteries are admitted also into the height of culture. This (we might say it was symbolized concretely by Athanarich the ‘barbarian’ now being a member of the royal family) is a movement into high society that is accomplished by Christian Mysteries, no longer by an appeal to the old hierarchy of social ascendancy symbolized by adherence to the Hellenic Mysteries. Both Gregory and Theodosios are on the same page here in addressing the (not insignificant) remnant of the Constantinopolitan senate who remained pagan.
These assonances with the Eleusinian cult would have been recognisable to the pagan élite. The Lesser Eleusinian Mysteries celebrated in Autumn, were preceded by a period of fasting, and ritual bathing in water for purification. The greater mysteries (only accessible to those who had undergone the earlier) revolved around the epoptai, the visions seen and the mysteries of regeneration understood. The fasting, the immersion in water, and the subsequent chrismation or photismos, of the second Christian ritual following baptisma would, therefore, all have struck a chord of familiarity with the stages of ascension. In the friezes and the Ninnion tablet surviving from Eleusis (as was a commonplace) the goddesses and the newly divinized figure of Triptolemos are dressed in radiant white. Among the Christians, the baptismal ‘candidates’ are likewise radiant in white garments. Theodosios, wearing white on this occasion, must have presented and clothed Athanarich in the white garments of Rome, as part of his initiation through baptism into the kinship of the emperor.
In Oration 39 Gregory specifically contrasts the Greek Mysteries and the Christian experience of baptismal illumination (photismòs).46 He begins by explaining to the congregation that this festival is an approach to the Baptism of Jesus as a moment of illumination, and invites them to remember the words that came from heaven. They would surely think of the baptismal narrative of Matthew 3.17, but surprisingly what Gregory has in mind, and then tells them, is a conflation of the Johannine texts: ’I am the light of the world’ 47 and the Prologue verse on how the light shone in the darkness and darkness could not comprehend it.48 And this is not only because the John text explicitly speaks about illumination, but also because of the key verses in Jn. 1. 12-13 explicate how those who receive the Logos are freed from the darkness, and become children of God, by ‘being born again’. 49 That Johannine verse is surely the most single extant scriptural evocation of the process of Mystery Palingennesia going even beyond Pauline usage.
In his opening exordium Gregory insists that Christian mysteries (sacraments) are a purification not at all like those rites of the pagans, or the Jews (he sets the ‘Law’ and the ‘Hellenes’ as two extremes that Christians must avoid). And then having set polarities he starts to talk about the similarities between this Mystery of Baptism and the Mystery rites of antiquity. His point is taken from the old Apologists before him, that evil daimonic forces have tried to muddy the water by mimicking the life-giving realities that were to be revealed in the Christian dispensation of the fullness of time. To amplify this old topos, however, he makes an extraordinarily wide-ranging review of what the Mysteries actually constitute. We must envisage here an interested clientele among those present, the aristocrats and courtiers attending the emperor as he speaks, many of whom would have regarded initiation into the Mysteries as an important step in their social promotion. Gregory lists them as those of: Zeus, Rhea, Demeter (i.e. Eleusinian), Dionysios, Semele, Aphrodite, Artemis, Hecate, Orpheus, Dodona, Delphi, the Magi, Chaldean astrology, Thracian, Mithras, and the mysteries of Isis, Osiris and Apis at Memphis. 50
The point of this exceptionally long enumeration, I think, is to undermine the idea that initiation into a Greek Mystery is a socially exclusive thing (a key attraction for the aristocrats present). He is heavily suggesting that they are not only defiling and ‘shameful practices’, but also common and superstitious. He sums them all up as ‘the games of children in the playground’ 51 and since they are sub-rational, they are matters that cannot really be discussed by men of sense (Logos 52). This is why, he argues, that they want all the things they do to remain in silence (mysterion). Gregory then evokes the famous Pauline argument 53: that he will serve as a true hierophant and explain everything in the open, for initiation into truth does not require secrecy. There is an ascentive progress in the Christian mystery: first a turning away from the earth-bound cult of false idols which keeps us tied to this material world. This first step of ascent casts off the demonic oppression that holds mankind enslaved by its passions and prevents humans from being enlightened by the higher noetic senses.54 This ascent is comprised of three stages, he goes on: first, the purification of the soul by learning to observe the commandments; second the ongoing clarification and illumination of the spirit; and finally, the reaching out to the Supreme Good which transcends all earthly reality. 55
His Oration then follows by developing those three stages. This is, in fact, the structural form of the very traditional episcopal homilies that formed the old baptismal catechesis and sacramental rite: asking for the candidates’ renunciation of the old gods (understood as evil daimones), exorcizing them once they have made that renunciation, and then proceeding to the rituals of cleansing water, illumination by presenting a candle, and chrismation in the Spirit. But how Gregory approaches it is transformative. He has actually shown to his audience how this Christian process actually fulfils what the élitist Mystery cults promised. His stress on the final stage of reaching-out for union with the Supreme Good is, of course, a clear apologia against the Neo-Platonic claims that Theurgic Union can bring them to a state of divine association. In all his theological writings Gregory insists that as far as humanity goes the highest spiritual state will be for a divine ‘reaching out’, never an attainment; for God in Himself is Unknowable and human beings can never attain to the divine presence unless God Himself makes the move to enable them to draw near.
That process, is the Economy of Christ’s salvation, and that is what he is offering to his congregation in this festival. Gregory then gives a major exposition of the Trinitarian theology that sketches out what the Supreme Reality can be conceived as: a controversial account as far as the remaining Arian clergy of the city were concerned (Demophilus’ grumbling deacons, for example, who were in reluctant attendance on this Nicene bishop), but welcome news to the emperor who had relied on Gregory to restore Nicene Orthodoxy in the capital. He ends this vigil oration somewhat abruptly, aware that night has now drawn in.
On the following morning he performed the solemn blessing of the waters and preparation of the chrism. This was the occasion on which Athanarich was baptized and Theodosios stood as sponsor, and at which Theodosios probably received his own chrismation. Oration 40 is the discourse he gave that day. He gave it in the baptistery, as was customary, only to those being baptized. So Theodosios was not then present to hear it. This is probably why Gregory starts by criticizing those who delay their baptism until they are seriously ill (exactly what happened in the case of the emperor).56 He is aware, he tells, them how many people are afraid to approach baptism because they think that the burden of observing all the evangelical commands will be too much if they get baptized too young. Gregory gives a very encouraging set of examples how dangerous it is to leave off the sacrament, and humorously insists that if Rahab the harlot of Jericho, who betrayed all her townsfolk, can be an example of salvation which the Bible offers us, then no-one need fear that salvation is beyond them.
He touches in Oration 40 on another major feature of Mystery initiation: the protection that it offers those initiated. Mothers in the city, he says, think that they should tie protective amulets around their babies’ necks: but this is no protection at all.57 The mystery of baptism offers a protective force that is a lifelong fending off of demonic assaults. He calls it a ‘precious shroud’ when it comes to the time of death, far more effective than ‘funeral libations’ as practised by the pagans.58 This element of protection against hostile demonic forces was always an aspect of the initiation into the cult of the specific gods whom the pagan Mysteries celebrated, and it is a moment when Gregory is clearly more consciously addressing the lower, less educated, classes who have come to him for baptism, and are less concerned with getting social ascendancy from their new sacrament, and more interested in how it can assure their safe transit from this world to the next. When he completes his catechetical instructions (making them aware of the basics of Trinitarian doctrine and criticising their (Arian) catechists in the process) he tells the group that now they are going to move into the main body of the church to join those already baptized in ‘further mysteries’. You have now been ‘initiated into the passion death and burial of Christ’, he tells them: next will be a ‘more secret ritual still’ (the unbaptized were not allowed to join them from this point onwards) for they will be ‘initiated into the Resurrection of the Lord’ (by which he means the eucharistic liturgy). Those aware of the normal process of mysteries (especially that of Eleusis) would be well aware that there were customary stages to be followed: and in this. the Church was not an exception.
All in all, therefore, we see that Gregory is well aware of Mystery religion theory and praxis. He has clearly made a close study of it and can name a wide variety of cults. The two that have made their mark most closely are those of Eleusis, and those of Theurgic initiation such as Julian learned from Himerios and established in his own temple in Constantinople where he himself served as Hierophant Orator. Gregory uses the image of the deification of Triptolemos in his finest literary creations to underscore that he too can speak as an initiate. In his January Constantinopolitan orations of 381 he makes the same point, but in each case his argument is that he is a greater Hierophant than his pagan counterparts, and that the Christian mysteries actually perform what the Greek mysteries promised but betrayed their initiates by causing them to be even more earth-bound by allegiance to evil daimonic forces.
In structuring this doctrine Gregory is using the apostolic authority of John and Paul, who set out the basic argument before him, and also the numerous Apologists of the second and third centuries who further elaborated the demon-pagan-cult apologia. But his own treatment is more clearly refined and couched in high rhetorical style. His synthetic power is far greater than any of his predecessors, as is his range of reading. He evidently seems (given that both his autobiographical poems and his Orations On the Lights were destined for readers in the capital) to make a strong argument of self-vindication after his brusque dismissal from duties in the imperial city, stressing the fundamental point that the ignorant among them did not appreciate what they once had in his presence; but also revealing to what extent he saw a strong missionary possibility in attracting the remaining pagan aristocrats of the capital to allegiance to the Church. This use of the Mystery religions as analogy, therefore, is another indication of Gregory’s life-long praxis and axiom: ‘Logoi in the service of the Logos.’ 59
NOTES
St. Tikkon’s University Review. Moscow. 2025. vol. 2 pp. 9-30. (English Abstract: Russian text): Мак-Гакин И. Греческие мистерии в трудах святителя Григория Богослова. Вестник Богословского факультета ПСТГУ. 2025. Вып. 2. С. 9-30. DOI: 10.15382/tfr20252.9-30
2 Further see: H. Bowden. Mystery Cults of the Ancient World. Princeton University Press. New Jersey. 2010; W. Burkert. Ancient Mystery Cults. Harvard University Press. Cambridge Mass. 1987; J. Bremmer. Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World. Walter de Gruyter. Berlin. 2014; O. Olieva. ‘Lesser Mysteries of Paideia: Basil of Caesarea on Greek Literature.’ (Russian Text) in: Vestnik: Drenei Istorii. vol. 77. No.2. Moscow. 2017. pp. 341-355; available at: (https://publications.hse.ru/pubs/share/direct/209498858.pdf)
3 Following Deuteronomy 32. 16-17 and Paul 1 Cor. 10.20-22, and systematically developed in the writings of Justin (2nd Apol. 5.); Tertullian (Apologeticus, 22); and Minucius Felix (Octavius, 27). For a fuller study c.f. T.W. Proctor. Demonic Bodies and the Dark Ecologies of Early Christian Culture. OUP. Oxford. 2002.
4 Rom. 16.25-26; 1 Cor. 2. 7-8; 1 Cor. 15. 51-53; Eph. 1. 9-10; Eph. 3. 3-11; Coloss.1. 24-27; 1Tim. 3.16.
5 1 Cor. 15. 51-53; Eph. 1. 9-10; Eph. 3. 3-11; Coloss.1. 24-27.
6 For a fuller discussion c.f. H.A.A. Kennedy. St. Paul and the Mystery Religions. Hodder & Stoughton. London 1913; C. Clemen, Der Einfluss der Mysterienreligionen auf das älteste christentum. De Gruyter. 1913 (repr. 2019).
7 For a further elaboration c.f. J.A. McGuckin. ‘Gregory of Nazianzus.’ in: The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity. (ed.) L. Gerson. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge & New York. 2011. vol. 1. pp. 482-497.
8 c.f. B.K. Storin. Gregory of Nazianzus’s Letter Collection. Univ. of California Press. Oakland, CA. 2019.
9 As was Basil. Prohaeresios (c. 276-368) was originally from Caesarea in Cappadocia and was one of the most celebrated sophists of his day.
10 Eunapios in the chapter of the Lives of the Sophists dedicated to ‘the divine Prohaeresios’ lauds him as a Hellene saint, with no reference to his Christian faith: but Julian’s letter explicitly to him, personally exempting him from the anti-Christian legislation of the De Professoribus edict, confirms that he was indeed a member of the Athenian church.
11 Printed as one in J.P. Migne. Patrologia Graeca. 38.13. Epitaph 5.
12 He felt the students and town council of Athens did not sufficiently appreciate his talents as the leading occupier of the ‘throne’ of the city, and so withdrew to his quarters and refused to appear or give any public instruction. Days passed and concern grew until at last, sensing what this latest rhetorical ‘performance without words’ was all about, a delegation of students and civic dignitaries came humbly to Prohaeresios’ door and pleaded with him to return. Reluctantly the great man acceded to their demands, satisfied that his importance had finally been satisfactorily recognized, and with a triumphant procession through the streets he was led back to the Odeon where he gave a great Oration to multitudinous applause.
13 See Orations 20-21, and 42.24.
14 Eunapios. Lives of the Philosophers.7.3.1; ibid. 7.3.6-7; c.f. P. Athanassiadi-Fowden. Julian: An Intellectual Biography. Routledge. London. 1992. p.48.
15 Gregory Nazianzen. Oration. 4.52. Migne. P.G.35.576.
16 c.f. G. Giangrande (ed). Eunapios. Lives of the Philosophers. 7.2.6-11; ibid. 6.9.3-7. Rome. 1956.
17 Further see A. Mleczek.’Julian the Apostate’s Religious Policy and the Renovatio Imperii Morumque in the Res Gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus.’ Classica Cracoviensia, vol. XXIII (2020), pp. 77–116.
18 Julian. Epistle 2. 12. 3-5.
19 He devotes extensive time to his written Philippics against Julian; and his letters show that he was very concerned about conditions at court and the treatment there of Christian nobles, since his brother Caesarios was Julian’s physician.
20 Further see: G. Boys-Stones, L. Annaeus Cornutus: Greek Theology, Fragments and Testimonia, Society of Biblical Literature. Atlanta. 2018; J. Brunschwig, ‘La théorie stoïcienne du genre suprême et l’ontologie platonicienne’ (1988): English reprint of the same in: Idem. Papers in Hellenistic Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994. pp. 92–157; Plotinus, Enneads. 6.9.6; F. Herkert. Körperlichkeit im theurgischen Neuplatonismus: Immanente Pforten zur Transzendenz. De Gruyter. Berlin. 2023; G. Betegh, ‘Pythagoreanism, Orphism and Greek Religion,’ in: C.A. Huffman (ed.) A History of Pythagoreanism, Cambridge, University Press, 2014. pp. 274–295; F.M. Cornford, 1922–1923, ‘Mysticism and Science in the Pythagorean Tradition’, Classical Quarterly, vol. 16. (1922), pp.137–150; vol. 17. (1923), pp. 1–12.
21 Porphyry. Vita Plotini. (ed) A.H. Armstrong. Harvard Univ. Press. Cambridge.1966.
22 E. Fleury. Héllenisme et Christianisme: S. Grégoire de Nazianze et son temps. Beauchesne. Paris. 1930
23 B.K. Storin. Gregory of Nazianzus’s Letter Collection. University of California Press. Oakland. Ca. 2019. pp. 229-234.
24 D.A. Sykes. ‘The Bible and Greek Classics in Gregory Nazianzen’s Verse.’ Studia Patristica 17 (Part 3). Oxford 1982. pp.1127-1130; B. Wyss. ‘Gregor von Nazianz: Ein griechisch-christlicher Dichter des 4. Jahrhunderts.’ Museum Helveticum. 6. 177-210. Christos Simelidis notes that Gregory virtually had an “obsession with Callimachos.” (Selected Poems of Gregory of Nazianzus. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. Göttingen. 2009. p. 31).
25 Further see: G. E.Mylonas, ‘Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries’, The Classical Journal 43. 3. pp. 130-146.
26 https://mywowo.net/en/greece/athens/archeological-museum/bas-relief-of-eleusis-room-15. There is also a modern plaster copy of that original in the Fitzwilliam museum in Cambridge: https://museum.classics.cam.ac.uk/collections/casts/relief-eleusis-demeter-triptolemos-and-persephone.
27 Gisela M. A. Richter. ‘A Roman Copy of the Eleusinian Relief.’ The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, vol. 30. no. 11.1935. pp. 216–221. See: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/14.130.9/
28 In the Ninnion tablet, which also depicts the Eleusinian mysteries (https://www.hellenic.org.au/post/the-eleusinian-mysteries ) the child can be seen in front of his father, king Keleos, enclosed in a transformative blaze of light between Demeter and Kore.
29 Hippolytos. The Refutation of all Heresies. 5.3. (Ante Nicene Fathers. vol. 5.) Christian Literature Publishing co. New York. 1886.
30 Further see: J.A. McGuckin. ‘The Ambivalences of Seeing in the Gospel Narratives.’ in JD Pettis (ed). Seeing the God: Ways of Envisioning the Divine in Ancient Mediterranean Religion. Gorgias Press. NJ. 2013. pp. 105-127; also Idem. ‘Seeing Divine Things in Byzantine Christianity.’ in JD Pettis (ed). Seeing the God. (2013). pp. 223-238.
31 c.f. F. Hadjittofi. ‘Centring Constantinople in Himerios’ Oration 41.’ in: A de Francisco Heredero (et al. edd.). New Perspectives in Late Antiquity in the Eastern Roman Empire. Cambridge Scholars Publications. Newcastle on Tyne. 2014. pp. 230-244; see also ch. 3 of: R. J. Penella. Greek Philosophers and Sophists in the Fourth Century A.D. Studies in Eunapius of Sardis. F. Cairns Publications. Leeds. 1990.
32 Lucian Somnium. 15. cited in Hadjittofi. op. cit. p.235.
33 c.f. E.J. Putnam. ‘Lucian The Sophist.’ Classical Philology, vol. 4, no. 2. April. 1909. pp. 162-177
34 c.f. G.A. Kennedy. Greek Rhetoric Under Christian Emperors. Princeton Univ. Press. New Jersey. 1983. p. 141.
35 Himerios. Oration 62.
36 Himerios. Oration 41.2. c. f. F. Hadjittofi. ‘Centring Constantinople in Himerios’ Oration 41.’ in: A de Francisco Heredero (et al. edd.). New Perspectives in Late Antiquity in the Eastern Roman Empire. Cambridge Scholars Publications. Newcastle on Tyne. 2014. pp. 230-244.
37 c.f. S. Elm. ‘A Programmatic Life: Gregory of Nazianzus’ Orations 42 and 43 and the Constantinopolitan élites.’ Arethusa. 3. 200. pp. 411-427; J.A. McGuckin. St. Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography. SVS Press. New York. 2001.pp. 360-372.
38 Three times in De Rebus Suis. Carmina, 2.1.1. Migne. PG. 37.969f. namely verses: 194-204; 210-212; and 452-453; :Carmen Lugubre. Carmina. 2.1.45(verses 228-266), Migne P.G. 37.1353f.
39 That of Joseph the Patriarch who dream-envisions his own glorification (Gen. 37.1-11) and that of Joseph the husband of Mary in Matthew’s Gospel who is divinely instructed about the Economy of salvation in his dreams (Mt. 1.19-24; 2.13).
40 For a fuller discussion arguing the case that these visionary accounts were his version of his own baptismal initiation in Athens couched in terms of Mystery initiation, see: J.A. McGuckin. St. Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography. SVS Press. New York. 2001. pp. 62-76.
41 Carmen Lugubre. Carmina 2.1.45. Migne. PG. 37. 1367. vv. 257-262.
42 Gregory, Carmina. 2.1.1. Migne P.G. 37: a good English version can be found in: C White. (tr). Gregory of Nazianzus: Autobiographical Poems. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. 2009.
43 A title which the Latin commentators of the Benedictine St. Maur edition of his works did not fully understand to refer to the Greek term for the sacrament (mystery) of illumination, i.e. Baptism-Chrismation.
44 Leader of a contingent of the Thervingian Goths (Visigoths) and rival to Fritigern. His treaty with Theodosios was used by the emperor as an important public relations exercise (c.f. Jordanes. Getica. 142-145; also Orosius. Historiae adversum paganos 7. 34, and Zosimus. New History 4. 34. 3-5).
45 Gregory complains in his baptismal Oration about the younger (Arian) clergy, probably the catechizing deacons of his predecessor Demophilos, who must have been offended by the overtly trinitarian approach he took: ‘Do you presume to teach your elders when you are still beardless and have not yet reached maturity?’ Oration. 39. 14. P.G. 36.352.
46 Oration 39. 4-6. Migne. P.G. 36. 337-341.
47 Jn. 8.12.
48 Jn. 1.5.
49 ὅὅὅι δὲ ἔἔἔβον αὐὐτόν, ἔἔἔκεν αὐὐτοῖῖς ἐἐξουσίαν τέκνα θεοῦῦ γενέσθαι, τοῖῖς πιστεύουσιν εἰἰς τὸ ὄὄὄμα αὐὐτοῦῦ, οἳἳἳὐὐκ ἐἐξ αἱἱμάτων οὐὐδὲ ἐἐκ θελήματος σαρκὸς οὐὐδὲ ἐἐκ θελήματος ἀἀνδρὸς ἀἀλλʼ ἐἐκ θεοῦῦ ἐἐγεννήθησαν.
50 Oration 39.4-5. Migne P.G. 36.337-340.
51 Oration 39.3. Migne. P.G. 36.337; Orat. 39.7. P.G. 36.341.
52 Oration 39.3. Migne P.G. 36. 336-337.
53 As we saw earlier: 1 Cor. 15. 51-53; Eph. 1. 9-10; Eph. 3. 3-11; Coloss.1. 24-27.
54 Oration 39.7. Migne. P.G. 36. 341; Oration 39.8. P.G. 36. 342-344.
55 Oration 39.8. Migne. P.G. 36.344.
56 Oration 40. 1. Migne. P.G. 36.360.
57 Oration 40.17. Migne. P.G. 36.381.
58 Oration 40.15. Migne. P.G. 36. 377.
59 De Rebus Suis. Carmina 2.1.1. vv. 97-102. P.G. 37. 977.