Thursday, March 25, 2010

Benefactors of humanity


More than once in the past I have said that Roger Pearse is a benefactor of humanity. It still seems to be true. Why is he our benefactor? He has taken it upon himself translate or commission translations of a great many early Christian works which have until now been available only to people who could read the original languages. Some people think that's fine -- if you don't know ancient Greek you would not understand these sources anyway -- but that's not my attitude, nor is it Roger's. As someone who has studied late antiquity and read a lot of obscure Christian literature from that era, I am in awe of Roger's generosity. The translations that he posts and otherwise gives away are not a complete substitute for the originals, but they make available part of the cultural and religious legacy of early Christianity to many new people.

I was inspired to say something about Roger by a blog post he published today, just one of the interesting posts of his that I've read since I discovered he had a blog. the Post announces a new translation of Hippolytus's Chronicon, one of the very first world chronicles written by Christian, in this case a third century Roman clergyman who eventually was martyred. (He is sometimes considered the first antipope.) In an earlier incarnation I had to know something about Hippolytus; it would have been nice to have this translation then.

But one of the interesting things about this new translation is that it is not, as far as I can tell, one of Roger's projects! There is another benefactor of humanity out there and this person is named T. C. Schmidt. Thank you very much, T.C.!

Image: Hippolytus being martyred, dragged behind a horse, from the Wikipedia entry on him.

3 comments:

  1. Hi Steve, to my eyes it looks more like he's been pulled apart by two horses (instead of the usual four); a typical punishment for high treason (England) or regicide (France). But I agree that H is said to have been killed by being "bound by the feet unto the necks of wild horses (plural) and ... drawn among thorns, briars and rocks".

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  2. Thank you for posting this. I was aware of Roger's work of course through the CCEL and Tertullian.org (and updates he posts on Mediev-L and elsewhere) but not that he had a blog - and was completely unaware of Tom Schmidt.

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  3. That's a great image. It's like a snapshot that was taken about five seconds too late, after the subjects had moved out of the intended frame.

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