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The Abridged and Revised Version of the Homily on the Eucharist by Gennadios Scholarios and Constantine Paleocappa as a Possible Rewriter
The homily On the mystical body of our Lord Jesus Christ by George Gennadios II Schol- arios (ca. 1400 — paulo post 1472) was the first original Orthodox theological text to use the word μετουσίωσις (transubstantiatio) as an ex professo Eucharistic term and to adopt the doctrine associated with it. This homily played a key role in the later development of the Eucharistic doctrine of the Orthodox Church during the post-Byzantine period. In the 17th century, however, this impact was indirect and occurred through an abridged and revised version of the homily, created by some author and ascribed to Gennadios, the Patriarch of Constantinople. That version was used as a source for the decrees of the Council of Jerusalem (1672) along with the authorization of the word μετουσίωσις. In 1690, the abridged version was published by Patriarch Dositheos II of Jerusalem and Scholarios was mentioned in the tomos of the Council of Constantinople in 1691. This version served also for the apologia of the term μετουσίωσις. In the beginning of the 18th century E. Renaudot considered this trea- tise authentic. Recently F. Tinnefeld attributed it to Meletios Syrigos (1585/1586-1663/1664). In this article we study the manuscript tradition, analyse the text of the forgery within its historical and theological context, and offer our preliminary hypothesis about its authorship. We come to the conclusion that Meletios Syrigos cannot be its author and that the abridged version appeared in the 16th century in the anti-Protestant miscellanea as evidence in favor of the Catholic theology of Eucharist. We hypothesize that the author could be a famous copyist and author of forged works in the 16th century, named Constantine Paleocappa. Further, we present a new edition of the Greek text accompanied by the references to the sources used to compose the pseudepigraph as well as an English translation.