190 Irenaeus: Life, Scripture, Legacy
Predictably, the reference just below, in our IV.33.7, his IV.62, to “those who work
schism” (qui schismata operantur) sets him off again. There is a long and learned note,
adorned with various patristic proofs—Clement of Rome (the Apostolic Constitutions,
actually), Optatus, Augustine—to the effect that “the Fathers reckoned the crime of
schism, by which various sects of the heresies rend the holy unity of the Church, to
be so grave and horrifying that they believed no torments could sufficiently expiate
it. That is what Irenaeus too openly indicates here.” The note concludes with a plea:
“Would that many of this age would pay closer attention to this!” (299).
The re-edition of twenty-one years later is reworked and appreciably fuller. There
are now Greek fragments printed alongside the Latin—from Eusebius, Theodoret, and
others, as well as from Epiphanius.
And the notes are reworked as well—but no more irenic. Thus the reference in our
III.10.2 (Feuardent’s III.11) to “Mary... prophesying on behalf of the Church” is now
the trigger for a longish Marian note showing that “there is nothing unusual in the fact
that in this passage Irenaeus attributes to the Blessed Mother of God at once the gift
and the exercise of prophecy,” for that gift is, after all, included in the fullness of grace
with which she is endowed (260 B-C).
The note on modern false prophets at IV.33.6 (Anabaptists, Luther, Calvin) now
ends with the comforting observation that “such wind-bag (ventosi) false prophets will
not escape the strict judgement of God” (399A).
The fulmination at IV.33.7 on schism is now followed by a comment on “those
who are outside the Church [qui sunt extra ecclesiam]”—“From this it is manifest that
heretics and schismatics are not true members of the Catholic Church—that is, not
sheep, but wolves; not shoots of the vine, but dry and lopped off twigs; not sons of the
groom and the bride, but bastard and illegitimate offspring of the Devil, their father,
and a heretical tart” (399 C-D).
Both Gallasius and Feuardent are militant, which is hardly surprising against the
background of communal violence, amounting to virtual civil war, in the France in
which or from the perspective of which they were writing. But both enriched the text.
Both—especially Feuardent—brought much learning to bear on its elucidation and left
behind a rich deposit of patristic parallels that was to be enthusiastically mined by their
successors for centuries. And neither can be regarded as boring.
Grabe
Irenaeus slumbered through the seventeenth century, but the eighteenth was to see two
great editions, one a reaction to the other.
In 1702 an Irenaeus was published in Oxford by John Ernest/Johann Ernst Grabe,
who was born and educated in Königsberg, but had lived in England since 1697. It is
dedicated to the Most Serene and Most Powerful King Frederick III of Prussia. (It was
only in the previous year, 1701, that Frederick decided he would rather be a King than
a mere Elector.)
Once again, the theme of Irenaeus as a man of peace is prominent; this time, with
a play on the meaning of the name Frederick. Irenaeus’s name “is indeed your name,
since he who is called Irenaeus by the Greeks is called Frederick by Germans.... And