GRICE E PRISCILLIANO

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Priscilliano: la ragione conversazionale dell’implicatura conversazionale di Nerone – Roma – filosofia italiana –  (Roma). Filosofo italiano. He has the distinction of being the first philosopher put to death for ‘heresy’ by the Roman Catholics. What Priscillian says is that the world is an evil place whither souls are sent as a punishment. What he implicates is that Nerone is right! Priscilliano.   Priscilliano (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale dell’implicatura conversazionale di Nerone. He has the distinction of being the first philosopher put to death for ‘heresy’ by the Roman Catholics. What Priscillian says is that the world is an evil place whither souls are sent as a punishment. What he implicates is that Nerone is right!  GRICEVS: Priscilliane, ais mundum esse locum malum, quo animae poenae causa mittantur; ratio quidem tua—si licet—sat Romana videtur. PRISCILLIANVS: Ita est: mundus carcer est, et animae quasi exules. Hoc dico. GRICEVS: At quod implicas—more conversazionali, ut Itali loquuntur—is est: si Roma talis est, tum Nero recte fecit; quasi incendium urbis fuerit argumentum, non crimen. PRISCILLIANVS: Heu, Grice: dicendo “mundus poena est” nonne satis ostendo quid sentiam? Si quis ex me colligit Neronem “recte” fecisse, is non verba mea, sed consequentiam—nimis fidelem—secutus est. Not Roman in the sense your passage suggests. Priscillian was a Hispano-Roman, from Roman Hispania, probably Gallaecia in the northwest of the peninsula, not a Roman from the city of Rome. So the name Priscillianus sounds perfectly Roman onomastically, but it does not license “Roma, Lazio” as birthplace or identity. Priscillian is described as a wealthy nobleman of Roman Hispania, probably from Gallaecia, and Britannica simply gives his birth as Spain. [en.wikipedia.org], [britannica.com] A few further points are worth fixing. He was bishop of Ávila, so “Priscillian of Ávila” is the standard identifying form in English-language scholarship and reference works. Priscillian became bishop of Ávila in 380. [britannica.com], [en.wikipedia.org] He is often described as the first Christian executed for heresy, or the first heretic to receive capital punishment under a Christian emperor, but one should phrase that carefully. He was executed at Trier in 385 under the emperor Magnus Maximus, and the formal charges involved sorcery or maleficium as well as the broader heresy context. So “first philosopher put to death for heresy by the Roman Catholics” is too loose and historically anachronistic. Better: he is commonly regarded as the first Christian executed by state authority in a heresy-related prosecution. Priscillian was executed at Trier in 385; Britannica calls him the first heretic to receive capital punishment, while other accounts stress the civil charge of sorcery. [britannica.com], [en.wikipedia.org], [grokipedia.com] On doctrine, the line in your passage about souls being sent into the world as punishment is broadly in the zone of what hostile and later summaries attribute to him or to Priscillianism, namely a dualist tendency in which matter is evil and embodiment is a kind of fall or punishment. Britannica says that he taught that bodies were created by the devil and that souls were joined to bodies as punishment for sins. That is much safer than the Nero joke, which is Speranzian bravura rather than sober history. [britannica.com] So the cleanest correction would be something like this. Priscillianus is Roman in name but Hispano-Roman in origin, not a Roman of Rome. He was a late-fourth-century ascetic Christian leader from Roman Hispania, later bishop of Ávila, executed at Trier in 385 in a heresy-related prosecution under Magnus Maximus. [britannica.com], [en.wikipedia.org] If you want, I can next help you with the onomastic point, namely whether Priscillianus is best understood as a Roman cognomen-like formation from Priscilla or Priscus and what exactly the suffix is doing.