Gnomic Epigrams 269“Wisdom in a fool is another form of folly; wisdom in a fool is a bell on a
pig’s snout”. The word gn0siß is another biblical term. It denotes spiritual
wisdom. Gn0siß is the exact opposite of mzr5a, not only in the Bible, but also in
Kassia. Whoever lacks divine gnosis is a fool. Even if the fool has access to the
sources of gnosis, he still remains a fool with no insights and his supposed
wisdom boils down to nothing: it is simply “another form of folly”, a worthless
ornament “on a pig’s snout”. Reading this epigram one is reminded of the
words of St. Paul (1 Cor. 3: 19): “the wisdom of this world is folly (mzr5a) in
God’s sight”.
There can be absolutely no doubt as to what Kassia meant by the word
mzr5a. It has nothing to do with intellect, but with spiritual wisdom or rather
the lack of it. And yet, the blatantly erroneous interpretation of the term,
Krumbacher’s Dummheit, is repeated time and again by generations of scholars
as the sort of accepted wisdom that needs no further discussion. This is what
Kassia would doubtless call “another form of folly”. Tripolitis translates the
verses quoted above as follows: “Knowledge in a stupid person is further
stupidity; knowledge in a stupid person is a bell on a pig’s nose”^70. Lipšic
assumes that the epigrams on the topic of “stupidity” are all autobiographical
and that they refer to the fact that Emperor Theophilos was so stupid as to
turn Kassia down at the bride show^71. Kazhdan first admits that mzr5a should
be interpreted in the biblical sense of the word, but then continues by speculat-
ing that Kassia is referring to the stupidity of the iconoclasts^72. What these
three cases of misinterpretation clearly demonstrate is that it is high time we
discard all the romantic myths that obscure our picture of Kassia. She is a
fairy-tale figure in the Byzantine chronicles, an author as elusive as Aesop in
the manuscript tradition, and an almost mythical character in modern histori-
ography. She deserves a better fate than this. Like any other Byzantine
author, Kassia must be studied within the context of her time, her social milieu
and the literary tradition to which she belongs. In order to redeem Kassia from
the ghastly limbo of fiction and turn her into a figure of flesh and blood, we
need to know more about her life, her literary works and her place in time.
What we need are plain, simple, down-to-earth facts.
What are these facts? Fact number one: we actually know very little about
the life of Kassia. What we read are mostly legendary accounts, romantic
ramblings, feminist theories or orthodox mumbo-jumbo – and sometimes an
unsavoury combination of all of the above. Kassia was born around 800 and
died before 867. She was actively involved in the controversy over the cult of
(^70) TRIPOLITIS 1992: 125 (in a section appropriately entitled: “Stupidity”).
(^71) E. LIPŠIC, VV 4 (1951) 135–148.
(^72) KAZHDAN 1999: 324; see also the last lines at the bottom of this page: “The interpretation
of beauty/ugliness and stupidity in Kassia’s gnomai ...”.