Petr Kitzler
Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Centre for Classical Studies at the Institute of Philosophy, Director of the Institute of Philosophy / Senior researcher of the Centre for Classical Studies
Since October 2023, I have been working as the Director of the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague (I was the Deputy director in 2016-2023), being affiliated with its Centre for Classical Studies since 2006 (I was the Head of this Centre in 2016-2023). In 2018 I was appointed Research Professor in social sciences and humanities by the Czech Academy of Sciences, and I also serve as the editor-in-chief of the international journal of classical Antiquity and its reception Eirene. Studia Graeca et Latina. After finishing several commented translations of and books on early Christian hagiography and Tertullian, my current research project focused on Tertullian's theological anthropology and especially his concept of the soul has now been completed: the first Czech translation of Tertullian's De anima with a thorough commentary and introductory study shall be published soon.
I studied classical philology, Latin mediaevistics and philosophy at the Masaryk University in Brno, and at the Charles University in Prague. I received the first doctorate (PhDr.) from Masaryk University in 2005, and the Ph.D. from Charles University in 2013. In 2008 and 2011 I was the Andrew W. Mellon Research Fellow at the Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London, and again a Visiting Research Fellow there in 2022. My primary focus is on early Christian literature, especially Latin patristics and early Christian hagiography, with special emphases on Tertullian and early acts and passions of martyrs.
Address: Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences
Jilská 1
110 00 Praha 1
Czech Republic
I studied classical philology, Latin mediaevistics and philosophy at the Masaryk University in Brno, and at the Charles University in Prague. I received the first doctorate (PhDr.) from Masaryk University in 2005, and the Ph.D. from Charles University in 2013. In 2008 and 2011 I was the Andrew W. Mellon Research Fellow at the Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London, and again a Visiting Research Fellow there in 2022. My primary focus is on early Christian literature, especially Latin patristics and early Christian hagiography, with special emphases on Tertullian and early acts and passions of martyrs.
Address: Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences
Jilská 1
110 00 Praha 1
Czech Republic
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Contents of Eirene 59, 2023 attached.
Books by Petr Kitzler
[Tertullianus, O duši (latinsko-české vydání). Úvodní studie, překlad, výkladové poznámky a rejstříky Petr Kitzler. Praha: Filosofický ústav AV ČR - OIKOYMENH 2023 (Knihovna raně křesťanské tradice, 32), 485 s. ISBN 978-80-7298-623-1.]
https://www.oikoymenh.cz/tertullianus/mucednikum/
in the subsequent reception of this text in the literature of the early Church. Since its composition in the early decades of the 3rd century, the Passio Perpetuae was enjoying an extraordinary authority and popularity. However, it contained a number of revolutionary and innovative features that were in
conflict with existing social and theological conventions. This book analyses all relevant texts from the 3rd to 5th centuries in which Perpetua and her comrades are mentioned, and demonstrates the ways in which these texts strive to normalize the innovative aspects of the Passio Perpetuae. These efforts, visible as they are already on careful examination of the passages of the editor of the passio, continue from Tertullian to Augustine and his followers. The normalization of the narrative reaches its peak in the so-called Acta Perpetuae which represent a radical rewriting of the original and an attempt to replace it by a purified text, more compliant with the changed socio-theological hierarchies.
The first part of this book briefl y analyses the Passio Perpetuae from the viewpoint of philology and literary history, and also sums up the previous scholarship on the topic covering all the problematic points. First, the Passio Perpetuae is set against the backdrop of the oldest martyr literature; there follow chapters on the dating of this narrative, its authorship, existing versions and theological background. The next chapter analyses the innovative features of the Passio Perpetuae that can be summed up as follows: first, the passio turns the existent socio-gender hierarchies upside down, and its main characters break most of the social and family bonds that were, in antiquity, considered natural and inviolable for woman; second, it ascribes to Perpetua such characteristics that were usually considered to belong to men; and third, the emphasis is placed on an extraordinary spiritual authority of the martyrs (especially of Perpetua, evidenced e.g. by her ability to absolve the dead pagan of the punishment in the nether world) within the community of believers.
The second part of the book focuses on the impact of the Passio Perpetuae in the subsequent centuries. It seeks to elucidate how this narrative influenced the later literature of the early Church, and mainly how the original revolutionary features were disempowered and adapted to aims, theological as well as others, of later centuries. All of the relevant texts mentioning Perpetua and her companions or directly quoting or alluding to their passion are analysed, and the way in which they try to normalize its innovative characteristics is shown. These eff orts, visible as they are already on careful examination of the passages of the anonymous editor of the passio, continue from Tertullian (who was a contemporary to the editor) to Augustine
and his followers; the only exception are the North African passions of martyrs of the 3rd century which imitate the Passio Perpetuae in its macrostructure as well as microstructure. The normalization of the narrative reaches its peak in the anonymous Acta Perpetuae (probably from the mid-5th century, with recensio A being clearly older than B) which represent a radical rewriting of the original and an attempt to replace it by a purified text, more compliant with the socio-theological conventions of that time, and taking into consideration the criticism and reinterpretation of Augustine. In Appendix, all of the Augustine’s and pseudo Augustine’s homilies on Perpetua and Felicity are translated into Czech.""
Whereas the first volume focused predominantly on the early stage of martyr literature, and as such it basically resembled similar “Western” commented anthologies (e. g. H. Musurillo’s The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, or Atti e passioni dei martiri prepared by A. A. R. Bastiaensen et alii), the present volume goes probably a bit beyond the traditional scope. As F. Scorza Barcellona, who kindly agreed to write a preface to this book, has aptly put it, modern interest in martyr literature too often mirrored Delehaye’s classic, but for sure too sketchy delineation of two kinds of hagiographic production, i.e. “historical” (“authentic”) and “epic” acts and passions of martyrs. These
were supposed to be strongly opposed to each other, and a clear preference has been given to the “historical” texts. As numerous studies have shown, this division is, however, very problematic, since even the most unadorned acta martyrum prove some degree of literary re-working. With this in mind, we wanted to treat the acts and passions of martyrs primarily as pieces of literature that helped to construct and reflect the Christian self-identity, not only as historical documents (which they necessarily are). We also tried to clarify how the later narratives were influenced by the martyr texts of previous centuries, how they used their motifs and topoi or how they developed them in transition to early Medieval hagiography.
For this reason, we collected in this volume thirteen “less known”, or less often translated and commented martyrological texts, mostly from the 4th and 5th centuries A. D., which belong to different traditions, contexts and places and thus bear a valuable witness to the evolution of martyr literature after the “Constantinian turn”. These narratives are arranged chronologically, according to the date of the event described, not according to the dating of the texts themselves (which is usually very difficult, if not impossible to establish). The most compact core of present volume consists of five texts originating from the Roman North Africa: Sermo de passione Donati et Advocati; Passio Isaac et Maximiani; Passio Marculi; Passio Maximae, Donatillae et Secundae and Passio Abitinensium. These narratives are further connected by the fact that the first three form the very corpus of Donatist martyr literature, whereas the latter two are considered “passioni donatistizzate” by F. Scorza Barcellona, and so they belong, in a way, to the same corpus. The events described in these highly rhetorical texts that consciously build upon the previous literary tradition of “orthodox” martyr narratives from the 3rd century, cannot be fully understood by present-day readers unless the historical and theological context is sketched which they are part of. Therefore, a detailed introductory study by Jiří Šubrt, entitled Ecclesia martyrum. The Stories of Martyrs against the Backdrop of Donatist Schism (Ecclesia martyrum. Příběhy mučedníků na pozadí donatistického schizmatu), opens this volume, carefully examining the complex historical situation during the reign of Constantine the Great and his succesors with special emphasis on the formation of Donatist schism and its reflection in the thought and literature of that time. Šubrt’s study, while describing mainly the historical and theological background leading to the establishment of the Donatist “true” ecclesia martyrum as opposed to the Catholic church of “traitors” (traditores), does not fail to analyze also the literary aspects of translated Donatist martyr texts as well as of other narratives which are part of this book.
Apart from the Donatist martyr stories, eight other texts can be found in this volume. They stretch from the Acta Eupli and the Martyrium Agapae, Irenae et Chionae that try to resemble closely the oldest texts of martyrs in their interrogatory trial-record-like style and reach their climax in the emphasis on martyrs’ refusal to surrender the Scriptures, through the narratives such as Martyrium Cononis, employing the established altercatio technique, to largely or fully invented passiones of the saints as found in the Martyrium Ignatii, Martyrium Dasii and Martyrium Aemiliani. Included is also the Martyrium Sabae Gothici, a passio informing us of a persecution of Christians in the Gothic society, though imitating the Greek acts of the martyrs, and the hagiographic-historical “novel” and a classic representative of the epic acta, so popular in the late Antiquity, the Acta Sebastiani (its Czech rendition seems to be one of the first translations into any modern language at all). Each text is preceded by its own introduction summarizing all known data about the narrative and its place in the context of earlier as well as later martyr literature, and by selected bibliography of editions as well as of relevant secondary literature. The Czech translations (all of the texts in present volume are translated into Czech for the first time) are accompanied by a massive commentary in the footnotes, which is rather literary-historical and seeks to elucidate the meaning of obscure passages and their context, to point out possible parallels and allusions to other Greco-Roman as well as early Christian writings, and informs also of different text variations, if necessary, and their significance for the text. In addition, almost thirty figures (dating from the 6th to 15th century) were included in this book, depicting mostly the martyrs whose stories are translated: we tried to collect the oldest extant depictions or those being extraordinary from the viewpoint of iconography (e. g. the fresco cycle dedicated to St Sebastian).
Although the later acts and passions of martyrs, to echo again the words of F. Scorza Barcellona, cannot often claim to be authentic witnesses of tribulations of martyrs, whose very existence is sometimes at least dubious, their singular quality is to be seen in the fact that they can help to reveal the authors’ motivations and circumstances under which such narratives were composed, and to unravel different purposes they were used for in the time when Christianity had definitely gained the upper hand in the Roman Empire.
Contents of Eirene 59, 2023 attached.
[Tertullianus, O duši (latinsko-české vydání). Úvodní studie, překlad, výkladové poznámky a rejstříky Petr Kitzler. Praha: Filosofický ústav AV ČR - OIKOYMENH 2023 (Knihovna raně křesťanské tradice, 32), 485 s. ISBN 978-80-7298-623-1.]
https://www.oikoymenh.cz/tertullianus/mucednikum/
in the subsequent reception of this text in the literature of the early Church. Since its composition in the early decades of the 3rd century, the Passio Perpetuae was enjoying an extraordinary authority and popularity. However, it contained a number of revolutionary and innovative features that were in
conflict with existing social and theological conventions. This book analyses all relevant texts from the 3rd to 5th centuries in which Perpetua and her comrades are mentioned, and demonstrates the ways in which these texts strive to normalize the innovative aspects of the Passio Perpetuae. These efforts, visible as they are already on careful examination of the passages of the editor of the passio, continue from Tertullian to Augustine and his followers. The normalization of the narrative reaches its peak in the so-called Acta Perpetuae which represent a radical rewriting of the original and an attempt to replace it by a purified text, more compliant with the changed socio-theological hierarchies.
The first part of this book briefl y analyses the Passio Perpetuae from the viewpoint of philology and literary history, and also sums up the previous scholarship on the topic covering all the problematic points. First, the Passio Perpetuae is set against the backdrop of the oldest martyr literature; there follow chapters on the dating of this narrative, its authorship, existing versions and theological background. The next chapter analyses the innovative features of the Passio Perpetuae that can be summed up as follows: first, the passio turns the existent socio-gender hierarchies upside down, and its main characters break most of the social and family bonds that were, in antiquity, considered natural and inviolable for woman; second, it ascribes to Perpetua such characteristics that were usually considered to belong to men; and third, the emphasis is placed on an extraordinary spiritual authority of the martyrs (especially of Perpetua, evidenced e.g. by her ability to absolve the dead pagan of the punishment in the nether world) within the community of believers.
The second part of the book focuses on the impact of the Passio Perpetuae in the subsequent centuries. It seeks to elucidate how this narrative influenced the later literature of the early Church, and mainly how the original revolutionary features were disempowered and adapted to aims, theological as well as others, of later centuries. All of the relevant texts mentioning Perpetua and her companions or directly quoting or alluding to their passion are analysed, and the way in which they try to normalize its innovative characteristics is shown. These eff orts, visible as they are already on careful examination of the passages of the anonymous editor of the passio, continue from Tertullian (who was a contemporary to the editor) to Augustine
and his followers; the only exception are the North African passions of martyrs of the 3rd century which imitate the Passio Perpetuae in its macrostructure as well as microstructure. The normalization of the narrative reaches its peak in the anonymous Acta Perpetuae (probably from the mid-5th century, with recensio A being clearly older than B) which represent a radical rewriting of the original and an attempt to replace it by a purified text, more compliant with the socio-theological conventions of that time, and taking into consideration the criticism and reinterpretation of Augustine. In Appendix, all of the Augustine’s and pseudo Augustine’s homilies on Perpetua and Felicity are translated into Czech.""
Whereas the first volume focused predominantly on the early stage of martyr literature, and as such it basically resembled similar “Western” commented anthologies (e. g. H. Musurillo’s The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, or Atti e passioni dei martiri prepared by A. A. R. Bastiaensen et alii), the present volume goes probably a bit beyond the traditional scope. As F. Scorza Barcellona, who kindly agreed to write a preface to this book, has aptly put it, modern interest in martyr literature too often mirrored Delehaye’s classic, but for sure too sketchy delineation of two kinds of hagiographic production, i.e. “historical” (“authentic”) and “epic” acts and passions of martyrs. These
were supposed to be strongly opposed to each other, and a clear preference has been given to the “historical” texts. As numerous studies have shown, this division is, however, very problematic, since even the most unadorned acta martyrum prove some degree of literary re-working. With this in mind, we wanted to treat the acts and passions of martyrs primarily as pieces of literature that helped to construct and reflect the Christian self-identity, not only as historical documents (which they necessarily are). We also tried to clarify how the later narratives were influenced by the martyr texts of previous centuries, how they used their motifs and topoi or how they developed them in transition to early Medieval hagiography.
For this reason, we collected in this volume thirteen “less known”, or less often translated and commented martyrological texts, mostly from the 4th and 5th centuries A. D., which belong to different traditions, contexts and places and thus bear a valuable witness to the evolution of martyr literature after the “Constantinian turn”. These narratives are arranged chronologically, according to the date of the event described, not according to the dating of the texts themselves (which is usually very difficult, if not impossible to establish). The most compact core of present volume consists of five texts originating from the Roman North Africa: Sermo de passione Donati et Advocati; Passio Isaac et Maximiani; Passio Marculi; Passio Maximae, Donatillae et Secundae and Passio Abitinensium. These narratives are further connected by the fact that the first three form the very corpus of Donatist martyr literature, whereas the latter two are considered “passioni donatistizzate” by F. Scorza Barcellona, and so they belong, in a way, to the same corpus. The events described in these highly rhetorical texts that consciously build upon the previous literary tradition of “orthodox” martyr narratives from the 3rd century, cannot be fully understood by present-day readers unless the historical and theological context is sketched which they are part of. Therefore, a detailed introductory study by Jiří Šubrt, entitled Ecclesia martyrum. The Stories of Martyrs against the Backdrop of Donatist Schism (Ecclesia martyrum. Příběhy mučedníků na pozadí donatistického schizmatu), opens this volume, carefully examining the complex historical situation during the reign of Constantine the Great and his succesors with special emphasis on the formation of Donatist schism and its reflection in the thought and literature of that time. Šubrt’s study, while describing mainly the historical and theological background leading to the establishment of the Donatist “true” ecclesia martyrum as opposed to the Catholic church of “traitors” (traditores), does not fail to analyze also the literary aspects of translated Donatist martyr texts as well as of other narratives which are part of this book.
Apart from the Donatist martyr stories, eight other texts can be found in this volume. They stretch from the Acta Eupli and the Martyrium Agapae, Irenae et Chionae that try to resemble closely the oldest texts of martyrs in their interrogatory trial-record-like style and reach their climax in the emphasis on martyrs’ refusal to surrender the Scriptures, through the narratives such as Martyrium Cononis, employing the established altercatio technique, to largely or fully invented passiones of the saints as found in the Martyrium Ignatii, Martyrium Dasii and Martyrium Aemiliani. Included is also the Martyrium Sabae Gothici, a passio informing us of a persecution of Christians in the Gothic society, though imitating the Greek acts of the martyrs, and the hagiographic-historical “novel” and a classic representative of the epic acta, so popular in the late Antiquity, the Acta Sebastiani (its Czech rendition seems to be one of the first translations into any modern language at all). Each text is preceded by its own introduction summarizing all known data about the narrative and its place in the context of earlier as well as later martyr literature, and by selected bibliography of editions as well as of relevant secondary literature. The Czech translations (all of the texts in present volume are translated into Czech for the first time) are accompanied by a massive commentary in the footnotes, which is rather literary-historical and seeks to elucidate the meaning of obscure passages and their context, to point out possible parallels and allusions to other Greco-Roman as well as early Christian writings, and informs also of different text variations, if necessary, and their significance for the text. In addition, almost thirty figures (dating from the 6th to 15th century) were included in this book, depicting mostly the martyrs whose stories are translated: we tried to collect the oldest extant depictions or those being extraordinary from the viewpoint of iconography (e. g. the fresco cycle dedicated to St Sebastian).
Although the later acts and passions of martyrs, to echo again the words of F. Scorza Barcellona, cannot often claim to be authentic witnesses of tribulations of martyrs, whose very existence is sometimes at least dubious, their singular quality is to be seen in the fact that they can help to reveal the authors’ motivations and circumstances under which such narratives were composed, and to unravel different purposes they were used for in the time when Christianity had definitely gained the upper hand in the Roman Empire.
Reviews:
Eva Stehlikova, Iliteratura, Litterae antiquae / graecolatina, 7. 1. 2010 (http://www.iliteratura.cz/clanek.asp?polozkaID=25625 )
Jiri Zurek, Iliteratura, Litterae antiquae / graecolatina, 11. 1. 2010 (http://www.iliteratura.cz/clanek.asp?polozkaID=25671)
Helena Panczová, Teologický časopis (Trnava) 1, 2010,145-148
Pavel Spunar, Listy filologické 133, 2010, 222-225
Jana Nechutová, Listy filologické 133, 2010, 225-228
David Vopřada, Salve 1, 2010, http://salve.op.cz/obsahy/2010/1_recenze.html
Eva Stehlíková, Wiener Studien (Wien) 123, 2010, 286-288
Jiří Žůrek, Sanctorum. Rivista dell’Associazione per lo studio della santità, dei culti e dell’agiografia (Roma) 7, 2010, 227-232
Jarmila Bednaříková, Graeco-latina Brunensia 15, 2010, 149-150
Daniel Škoviera, Historický časopis (Bratislava) 58, 4, 2010, 755-756.
Martin Bažil, Revue d´études augustiniennes et patristiques (Paris) 56, 2010, 294-295.
David Vopřada, Augustinianum (Roma) 51, 2011, 275-278.
Jan Burian, Historica. Revue pro historii a příbuzné vědy 2, 2011, 116-117."
Reviews:
Vox Patrum (Lublin, Polska) 24, 46–47, 2004, 664–669 Jozef Figiel
Listy filologické 128, 1–2, 2005, 204-206 Eva Stehlíková
Revue d’etudes augustiniennes et patristiques 52, 2006, 435-436 Martin Bažil
Auriga – ZJKF 48, 2006, 118–125 Markéta Koronthályová
Sambucus II, 2007, 245-248 Daniel Škoviera
Host 10, 2004, 56–57 Jana Nechutová
Divadelní revue 1, 2005, 70 Alena Sarkissian
in: in: Peter Lampe - Heidrun E. Mader (eds.), "Montanism" in the Roman World. The New Prophecy Movement from Historical, Sociological, and Ecclesiological Perspectives. Festschrift for William Tabbernee on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus / Studien zur Umwelt des Neuen Testaments, 132), pp. 109-120. ISBN 978-3-525-50104-7.
This paper focuses on Tertullian’s concept of the human soul (as treated mainly in his De anima), and especially on Tertullian’s notion of its corporeality (corporalitas) which he advocates and which can seem surprising at the first glance. First, the philosophical context of this idea is examined: according to Tertullian’s “corporealistic ontology” borrowed from Stoicism, the corporeality is a necessary prerequisite of everything that really is, including God and soul that have to have its “bodies” (corpus) in order to exist in the first place. These bodies, however, are always sui generis, and Tertullian’s corporealism thus does not equal materialism. From the subsequent analysis of Tertullian’s arguments in favour of the soul’s corporeality it follows that the Carthaginian probably developed this doctrine only later in his life as a direct response to refute his “heretic” opponents inspired by Platonism, and he could probably draw on similar thoughts expressed by Justin. Although his concept did not win out and found only extremely limited response in later centuries, it cannot be considered an isolated thought experiment only, which is testified to at least by remarks by Augustine that he had dealt with similar problems in his youth.
corporealistic ontology inherited from Stoicism, the principal thesis of which is that everything which is characterized as a real and independent being must be corporeal. Even though Tertullian’s doctrine did not find wider response in the early Church, Augustine’s remarks that he dealt with similar problems in his youth testify that we cannot consider it to be an isolated and incomprehensible thought experiment.
published in: Z. Silagiová - H. Šedinová - P. Kitzler (eds.), Pulchritudo et sapientia. Ad honorem Pavel Spunar, Praha, Kabinet pro klasická studia FLÚ AV ČR 2008, pp. 11-62. ISBN 978-80-254-1863-5.
Bibliography of late Eva Stehlíková (1941-2019), an eminent Czech theatre historian, clssical philologist and a cultural historian, covering the years 2010-2019.
Czech Academy of Sciences, invites you to international conference
HELLENISM, EARLY JUDAISM
AND EARLY CHRISTIANITY
TR ANSMISSION AND TR ANSFORMATION OF IDEAS
12 – 13 September 2019 / Pr ague, CR
Vila Lanna, V Sadech 1, Prague 6