Primary source · Latin
Gennadius, On Illustrious Men (the Continuation)
Gennadius of Marseilles · c. AD 480–495
What this text is
Ninety-odd further entries, from 'James the Wise' (in fact Aphrahat, the Persian Sage, filed under the wrong name — a famous confusion preserved intact) through Pachomius and the desert legislators to the priest-theologians of Gaul. Gennadius is a semi-Pelagian sympathizer and grades his subjects accordingly; cited here as the last ancient census of who was still worth remembering, bias declared.
Profile of Gennadius of Marseilles →
Public-domain translations
NPNF translation (Richardson, 1892, public domain)
Pachomius the monk, a man endowed with apostolic grace both in teaching and in working miracles... wrote a Rule suited to both classes of monks. (ch. 7)
Manuscript witnesses
Early tradition of the joint De Viris corpus
6th–7th c.Gennadius travels bound to Jerome's catalogue from late antiquity onward; the oldest carriers of Jerome's text already include the continuation.
Richardson's critical edition (Texte und Untersuchungen 14.1)
1896The edition of both catalogues behind the chapter numbering used here.
Provenance
Marseilles; written to carry Jerome's catalogue of 392 down another century
Editions & scholarship
Critical editions and standard translations behind the text above.
- Lives of Illustrious Men (NPNF II.3)E. C. Richardson (tr.), 1892The standard public-domain English translation of Jerome and Gennadius together.
- Divine Grace and Human Agency: A Study of the Semi-Pelagian ControversyRebecca Harden Weaver, 1996The Gallic controversy behind Gennadius's sympathies — the declared bias a reader must weigh.