Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 16:50:58 -0700 (PDT)
From: Jerry Friedman 
Subject: Re: (urth) Wolfe and Eusebius


--- James Wynn  wrote:
> The recent talk about Chadwick's "History of the Early Church" made me
> think
> of another Church history book that I'm convinced is sitting on Wolfe's
> shelf at this moment:
> Eusebius' "Historia Ecclesiastica" ("History of the Church") which he
> started writing around 308 AD. Eusebius was the bishop of Caesarea in
> Palestine and drew partly from the 700+ works in the library there. He
> served in that region most of his adult life before Constantine's
> victory.
> 
> A search of the Urth lists revealed that it has already been shown here
> that
> Severian's name comes from a later name of the Encratites (a 2nd century
> Gnostic sect). But I didn't see anyone note that the varied and
> ingenious
> tortures of Christians in Gaul under Marcus Aurelius (Book 6) leads one
> to
> think of the Torturers Guild. Nor has anyone mentioned that Tatian, the
> Encratite's founder, wrote a composite of the gospels entitled
> "Diatesaron"
> meaning "THROUGH THE FOUR". So maybe when Tor said they wanted to break
> up
> the novel THIS was a reason Wolfe decided to break it into four novels
> rather than the traditional three?
...

Well, it's less hubris than simply imitating the number of Gospels.
(But what do I know?  Maybe from a Catholic point of view, that
wouldn't be hubris at all.)

Another thing that's not in the archives (that search function is
great!) is that, since as Mantis has told us the names of Commonwealth
citizens are those of Catholic saints, there must be Saints
Severian.  There are three at
 (but only one Severa).
I don't see any relevance of any of them except the one who was
martyred with St. Aquila--probably his wife, says the site.  Does
this make sense of that comment in one of the Afterwords that a
connection between the Claw and the eagle of Jove is probably too
pat?  Maybe the connection is to St. Aquila, the eagle.  And is this
all in _Lexicon Urthus_?

Jerry Friedman

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