Review of Daley’s Leontius of Byzantium

This impressive volume provides the full text, in Greek with an English translation on facing pages, of six polemical works attributed to an accomplished sixth-century monastic theologian. It also includes much of the necessary textual arcana, such as an account of the manuscript tradition, marginal scholia, previous editions, dubious fragments attributed to the same author, and some truly remarkable scholarship identifying the sources of the texts quoted in Leontius’ florilegia, along with a chart comparing them to other patristic florilegia. Daley’s 100-page introduction is concise but far-reaching; it is the mature work of a senior scholar whose DPhil thesis in 1978 was already a critical edition of Leontius. Rumors of its coming publication have been abroad for decades. This at last is the edition of Leontius for theologians to read and cite from now on.

And systematic theologians ought to take up and read Leontius of Byzantium, for a number of reasons…