Book of Rules of Tyconius, The

Its Purpose and Inner Logic

Pamela Bright

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780268076252
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Études bibliques

The Liber Regularum, written by Tyconius in the Fourth Century A.D., was the first system of biblical interpretation proposed by a Latin theologian. Augustine was very interested in this work and included an extraordinary summation of it in his De doctrina christiana. Although this treatment insured the preservation of the work and its lasting fame, Augustine's summary became better known than the original. Pamela Bright's The Book of Rules of Tyconius: Its Purpose and Inner Logic reintroduces this neglected classic of early church literature. Bright asserts that although Augustine was greatly influenced by the Liber Regularum, his philosophical differences caused him to misunderstand its meaning. Bright reexamines the meaning of "prophecy" and "rule" from Tyconius's perspective and reveals that the purpose of the book was not to provide a general guide to scriptural interpretation, but rather a way to interpret apocalyptic texts. She cites Tyconius's intense concern with evil in the church as the genesis of his interest in the apocalypse and subsequently the meaning of the scripture concerning it. Tyconius speaks of the "seven mystical rules" of scripture that with the grace of the Holy Spirit reveal the true meaning of prophecy. If an interpreter follows the "logic" of these rules, the nature of the church as composed by both good and evil membership is revealed. Bright argues that Tyconius was not illogical or incompetent in the work's composition as many critics have claimed but rather that he organized his material in a concentric pattern so that Rule Four, the center of the seven rules, is also the central development of his theory. Of interest to theologians, students of biblical interpretation and of Augustine, The Book of Rules of Tyconius focuses attention upon a work that had great influence on the understanding of the nature of the church, on interpreting scripture, and its meaning for the Church of its day.

CHAPTER ONE

THE BOOK OF RULES – A NEGLECTED CLASSIC

THE LITERARY HISTORY OF THE BOOK OF RULES

In tracing the manuscript tradition of the Book of Rules, Burkitt came across a memoria technica of the seven rules of Tyconius in a thirteenth century Laon manuscript, first published in the French Departmental Catalogue 5/1849.

Regula prima caput nostrum cum corpore iungit.
corpore de uero loquitur mixtoque secunda.
tertia describit quid lex quid gratia possit.
quarta genus speciem totum partemque rependit.
tempora disiungit maiora minoraque quinta.
sexta refert iterum que primo facta fuerunt.
septima serpentis tibi¹ membra caputque resoluit.

The first rule links our Head with the Body.
The second speaks of the Body, true and mingled.
The third describes what Law and what grace can do.
The fourth decides between genus and species, the whole and the part.
The fifth differentiates greater and lesser times.
The sixth reports yet again the things which took place originally.
The seventh destroys for you the head and members of the serpent.²

There are two Roman manuscript copies of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries of this deft abridgment of the Book of Rules. It should come as no surprise that such an exegetical tool exists since the Book of Rules had been part of the standard listings of exegetical works in the Church since the time of Cassiodorus in the sixth century. Isidore of Seville described the Rules in his Liber Sententiarum in the seventh century and Bede prefixed his Explanatio Apocalypsis with a description of Tyconius’ Book of Rules. The scholarly Hincmar, in his dispute with Godescalc, referred to Tyconius and his seven rules.

Hincmar, Archbishop of Reims in the second half of the ninth century, has a special place in the literary history of the Book of Rules since he gave what Burkitt considers to be “the oldest and best manuscript of it now known”³ to the Cathedral library at Reims. This vellum quarto Codex Remensis in Carolingian minuscules consists of 35 lines of 139 columns in all. Burkitt has traced the rest of the intact manuscripts of the Book of Rules, with one exception, to a single Vatican manuscript of the tenth century, Codex Vaticanus Reginensis 590. The exception referred to is a vellum manuscript of the ninth century, Codex Modoetianus, “Ambrosiaster’s” commentary on the Pauline epistles. The last five pages of the manuscript are an abridgment of the Book of Rules known as the Monza Epitome. Burkitt has included a transcript of this document in an appendix to his critical edition of the Book of Rules.⁴

Burkitt’s study of the literary history of the Book of Rules demonstrates how problematic the textual transmission proved for the understanding of Tyconian hermeneutics. When one compares the Vatican codex and Hincmar’s copy of the Book of Rules, the latter is far superior. Since, according to Burkitt,⁵ the Vatican Codex is the ancestor of the remaining witnesses, Codex Parisiensis of the eleventh century and Codex Oxoniensis of the twelfth century, the corruption of the manuscript tradition had an adverse effect upon the reception of Tyconius’ exegetical teachings.

THE NEGLECTED CLASSIC

What does it mean to describe the Book of Rules as a neglected classic? Burkitt argued that what led to its being neglected and gradually forgotten by the end of the nineteenth century was the poor state of its textual transmission. However, there is another sense in which the Book of Rules may be described as neglected. A close study of the references to the Book of Rules reveals that Tyconius’ work has been read indirectly rather than directly from the original. The Book of Rules has been read mainly through the eyes of Augustine who included a summary of the seven rules of Tyconius in his own exegetical work, the De Doctrina Christiana.

Burkitt sums up the influence of Augustine upon the reception of the Book of Rules in the Introduction to the critical edition.

… the sole reference to Tyconius’ book independent of the review in De Doctrina Christiana is that by the author of the de Promissionibus. He was an African, and perhaps for that reason familiar with the book which his countryman had written less than a century before. Both Cassian and John the Deacon quote the Book of Rules only to illustrate a passage where Tyconius’ explanation had already been noticed by Augustine. Cassiodorus names Tyconius only in the sentence in which he recommends the study of the De Doctrina Christiana; Isidore follows Augustine’s remarks more than the original Seven Rules. Therefore, it is not unlikely that the fame of the Book in the middle ages and its preservation to the present day is entirely due to Augustine. It was his recommendation, rather than the intrinsic merit of the work of a Donatist, that secured the respect of Latin Christendom.⁶

It is the “intrinsic merit” of the work of Tyconius that is the subject of the present inquiry. It will be argued that it was precisely the “intrinsic merit” of the Book of Rules that was obscured by Augustine. It was obscured not only by the authority of Augustine so that the seven rules were read in Augustine’s summarized version rather than in their original form in the Book of Rules, but the hermeneutical theory itself was obscured by Augustine’s misunderstanding of the fundamental principles of Tyconius’ system of exegesis.

The relationship between the two works, the Liber Regularum of Tyconius and the De Doctrina Christiana of Augustine will be examined more closely in Chapter Five, which investigates the meaning of “rule” in the Book of Rules. For the immediate purpose of investigating why the Book of Rules has remained an “unread classic” of biblical hermeneutics we turn to the historical context of Augustine’s own reading of Tyconius’ exegetical treatise.

AUGUSTINE’S SUMMARY OF THE BOOK OF RULES

When Augustine returned to his native Africa in 388, he came as a recent convert to a Church already venerable in its martyrs, a Church with a theological tradition dating back to Tertullian and Cyprian. It was also a Church deeply divided. The unity for which Cyprian had striven in the middle years of the third century had been disrupted by the bitter dispute over the Carthaginian See in the early years of the Constantinian peace.

When Augustine began to share the fruits of his study of Scripture and his methods of scriptural exegesis with his fellow Catholics in the De Doctrina Christiana, begun in 396, already more than eighty years had passed since Donatus and his party had refused the validity of the election of Caecilius in 312. Mutual recriminations, individual acts of violence, popular uprisings, imperial repressions, even civil war had ensued. Both parties, Donatist and Catholic, claimed the marks of the true Church, theirs were the enspirited waters of baptism, theirs the true bishop, the true altar. Both sides laid claim to be heir to a hallowed tradition and looked to the vindication of their claims when Christ was to appear in the glory of his Second Coming – soon!

The Scriptures were invoked by both sides. In the disputes between the two bishops, the Donatist Parmenian and the Catholic Optatus of Milevis in the sixties, seventies, and eighties of the fourth century, we can hear echoes of these debates. The Donatists could point to the horror of Christian persecuting Christian as a sign that the last days were upon the earth. Soon the faithful remnant would be sealed for victory (Rev 7:1-8). On the other hand, the Catholic Optatus would argue that the Donatists, in withdrawing from the unity of the Church, had disobeyed the injunction of the lord of the harvest in Matthew’s Gospel (Matt 13:29) that there was to be “no separation until the judgment.”

While Optatus and Parmenian battled over the interpretation of Scripture in favor of their particular party, Tyconius was also joining the fray, but his strategy involved a more difficult maneuver. His strategy was to open the battle lines on two fronts. On the one side he defended his fellow Donatists as the victims of persecution; on the other he insisted that the Church, the Body of Christ, was to be found throughout the world – certainly beyond the confines of Africa. Augustine expressed his surprise at what Tyconius had written about the catholicity of the Church in the Book of Rules:

A certain Tyconius, who wrote most triumphantly against the Donatists, although he himself was a Donatist and hence is found to have had an absurd mentality where he did not wish to abandon them altogether, wrote a book which he called of Rules, since in it he explained seven rules with which, as if with keys, the obscurities of the Divine Scriptures might be opened.⁷

It was more than the ecclesiology of Tyconius that intrigued Augustine and his circle. In a letter to Bishop Aurelius of Carthage in 397, Augustine remarks,

On my part I am not forgetting what you asked about the seven rules or keys of Tyconius, and as I have written many times, I am waiting to hear what you think of it.⁸

In the mid 390’s, Augustine was drawing up a program for the study and interpretation of Scripture:

There are certain rules for the interpretation of Scripture which I think might with great advantage be taught to earnest students of the Word…⁹

Augustine was to draw upon the “gold of Egypt,”¹⁰ his own past secular training, as well as upon traditional Christian exegetical methods in presenting his material. In 396 he broke off his work well into the third book of the De Doctrina Christiana. Augustine did not resume this particular work until 427, by concluding the third book and adding a fourth on the style of homiletics. It is in finishing the third book which actually concludes his study of exegetical method in the De Doctrina Christiana that Augustine summarizes and comments upon the Book of Rules of Tyconius.¹¹

It was over thirty years since Augustine had first read Tyconius’ treatise on scriptural interpretation. The bishop of Hippo was now a figure of such eminence in the Church that his approbation of a work written nearly half a century before by a Donatist author was decisive for the subsequent history of the Book of Rules.¹² Augustine’s summary was to prove a fateful vehicle for Tyconius’ thought.¹³

Burkitt notes that Augustine’s commendation was not without reserve.¹⁴

The great African theologian suggests a fresh title for Rules II and III, and gently complains that the treatment of Promises and Law is not quite full enough for the times of the Pelagian controversy. He also warns readers not to forget that Tyconius was not a Catholic: “Caute sane legendus est, non solum propter quaedam in quibus ut homo errauit, sed maxime propter illa quae sicut Donatista haereticus loquitur.”¹⁵ But this is Augustine’s hardest word, and indeed throughout the whole review he treats Tyconius as an authority to be explained rather tha...