- Theophanes Kerameus
Theophanes Kerameus (1129-1152) was
Archbishop of Rossano , inCalabria , Italy, and a celebratedhomiletic writer.His sermons, ninety-one of which are known in manuscript, are mostly exegetical, and written in Greek, which was then still extensively spoken in
Sicily andSouthern Italy . They are simple and natural, and are masterpieces of oratorical skill, lucid and unforced expositions of biblical texts.They were first edited, together with a Latin translation and extensive annotations, by
Francesco Scorso , S.J. (Paris, 1644), which edition is reprinted in "Patrologia Graeca ", CXXXII, 125-1078. A new edition was prepared byGregory Palamas (Jerusalem, 1860).The fact that various other individuals also bore the surname "Kerameus" has given rise to a controversy concerning the authorship of these homilies. Scorso, their first editor, supposed Theophanes Kerameus to have lived in the ninth century and to have been Bishop of
Taormina in Sicily.Batiffol , in his work entitled "L'abbaye de Rossano" (Paris, 1891), XXXI, 36-56, held that part of the homilies were written by the Calabrian monkJohn Philagathos , a disciple of AbbotBartholomaeus of Grottaferrata (d. c. 1050).References
*Lancia di Brolo, "Storia della Chiesa in Sicilia" (Palermo, 1884), 459-92;
*____, "Sopra Teofano Cerameo ricerche e schiarimenti" in Archivio storico Siciliano B., I (Palermo, 1877), 391-421.Concerning a probable interpolation in homily 55, see Langen, in Revue Internationale de Theologie, III (1895), 122-7.
External links
* [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14623b.htm "Catholic Encyclopedia" article]
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