Gregory of Nyssa’s Christological Legacy in Leontius of Byzantium

The advent of the patristic argument in the Christological debates of the fifth and sixth centuries gave rise to two new subsidiary theological procedures: reconstruction and florilegia. Extracts from Gregory of Nyssa’s works are included in almost all florilegia appended to different Christological writings of prominent sixth-century theologians, from John the Grammarian to Leontius of Jerusalem. In this study, I explore how Leontius of Byzantium (fl. ca. 520-544) “uses” all nine excerpts from Gregory of Nyssa as arguments of authority within his own defence of Chalcedonian Christology, aiming to contribute a new chapter to the history of Gregory’s Christological reception. What sets Leontius of Byzantium apart from other sixth-century theologians is his effort to articulate a scientific method for interpreting earlier patristic authorities. Leontius not only reads Gregory through a Chalcedonian perspective—he takes Gregory’s Christology as a guarantor of Chalcedon’s orthodoxy. Another peculiarity is what I term Leontius’ holistic exegetical method: Gregory’s apparently contradictory expressions should be considered together within the same interpretative act to reveal their true meaning as complementary rather than contradictory.