We live in an age of scholarly companions and handbooks. Inevitably the quality of such volumes, devoted to different historical periods and to a wide variety of individuals and themes, varies greatly, since it depends first on the editor's choice of contributors, next on persuading all the contributors to complete and submit their work in a timely fashion, and finally, and most difficult, on ensuring that only scholarly work of high calibre is included in the volume. On these counts the new Athanasius Handbuch succeeds magnificently, with the relatively minor exceptions on which I comment below. Peter Gemeinhardt has carried the project of the Athanasius Handbuch through from inception to publication in a mere four years: Mohr Siebeck first approached him in January 2007, when he was still a Privatdozent in Jena, and copies of the finished product were on display and available for purchase when the volume was launched at the Oxford International Patristics Conference in August 2011. The publisher must be congratulated on choosing and placing confidence in a young and energetic editor, while the editor and the contributors to the Handbuch deserve the profound gratitude of all scholars interested in any aspect of the history, thought and Christian culture of the age in which Athanasius lived.
The coverage of the Handbuch is thorough and systematic, except in the one area identified below. The first of four main sections is entitled ‘Orientierung’ and contains brief surveys of manuscripts and editions and of the current state of research into Athanasius (pp. 2–18). The second section has three parts, which discuss (1.) the historical setting; (2.) Athanasius' life, and career, his theology and his role in church politics; and (3.) Athanasius' dealings with his contemporaries – emperors, theological allies and ecclesiastical opponents (pp. 73–164). The third and longest section comprises a detailed account of Athanasius' varied writings complemented by an analysis of their principal themes and their theology (pp. 166–343). The fourth and final section considers Athanasius ‘Wirkung und Rezeption’ (pp. 345–461), and the volume is rounded off with helpful lists of editions of Athanasius' writings and pseudo-Athanasiana, of editions of other ancient sources, a general bibliography and five separate indices. Many of the individual discussions are naturally due to the members of the Erlanger Athanasius-Arbeitsstelle (Hanns Christof Brennecke, Annette von Stockhausen, Ute Heil and Christian Müller), but there are contributions from more than thirty scholars in all: most of the contributors currently work in German or Swiss universities, but some excellent scholars from outside Germany write on topics in which they have special expertise – Anahit Avagyan (Yerevan) on the reception of Athanasius in Armenia, Alberto Camplani on the Festal letters, James D. Ernest on Athanasius and the Bible, Samuel Rubenson on Athanasius and Antony, Markus Vinzent (now in London) both on Athanasius' relations with the Eusebians, Marcellus of Ancyra and the west in general and on several pseudo-Athanasiana, and Johannes Zachhuber (Oxford) on Athanasius and Antioch.
The Handbuch is nevertheless a fundamentally German product, and this has produced some significant omissions which may disappoint English-speaking readers. While the section on Athanasius' Nachleben contains a full treatment of the reception of Athanasius by both orthodox Christians and non-Chalcedonians in late antiquity, during the Byzantine period and in the Latin Middle Ages, the discussion of the Reformation and later centuries focuses almost exclusively on the use of and reactions to Athanasius by German Protestants and German Catholics. Hence there is nothing here on Cardinal Newman, whom the Handbuch mentions only for his 1844 translation of some of Athanasius' writings against Arius (p. 131). But Athanasius was central to Newman's thinking throughout his long life: his mischievous early book The Arians of the fourth century was first published in 1833 and reached its seventh edition in 1890 shortly before its author's death. Newman's ‘Arians of the fourth century’ are thinly disguised Anglicans of his own day – which suggests that at some level the young Newman subconsciously thought of himself as a nineteenth century Athanasius. Fortunately we now have Benjamin King's superb Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers: shaping doctrine in nineteenth century England (Oxford 2009) to fill part of this lacuna. The German focus of the Handbuch also means that there is no mention of Edward Gibbon's unexpectedly warm praise of Athanasius, which I analysed in ‘Derivative scholarship and historical imagination: Edward Gibbon on Athanasius', in Corolla Torontonensis: studies in honour of R. Morton Smith (Toronto 1994), 13–28.
It is clearly impossible to assess so rich and varied a volume within the confines of an ordinary review, and in this case even a long review article could hardly do justice to all aspects of a volume that is helpful and informative to an extremely high degree on almost all aspects of Athanasius, and especially on textual and theological matters. I have learned an enormous amount from perusing the Handbuch and following through the discussions of particular topics and themes by different writers. However, the treatment of historical issues in the career of Athanasius fails to engage properly with recent non-German scholarship, and tends to repeat the views of the Erlanger Athanasius-Arbeitsstelle even where these views have been proved to be wrong. Let me give some examples which relate to my own researches into the episcopal career of Athanasius. My Athanasius and Constantius: theology and politics in the Constantinian Empire (Cambridge, Ma 1993) was studiously ignored in the notes to the excellent critical text of Athanasius' Defence before Constantius in Athanasius Werke, II/8 (Berlin–New York 2006), 279–309, even though it had disproved in advance much that is asserted there, as I documented in detail in Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum xi (2007), 378–401. In ‘The exile and recalls of Arius,’ JTS n.s. lx (2009), 109–29, I showed that the reconstruction of Arius' career after 325 which Brennecke advanced in Athanasius Werke III/1: Dokumente zur Geschichte des Arianischen Streites, iii: Lieferung (Berlin–New York 2007), pp. xxxvi–xxxviii, was fatally flawed by its reliance an outdated list of the prefects of Egypt between 324 and 328 published in 1952 despite the existence of no fewer than four later and fuller modern lists (published in 1962, 1964, 1982 and 1986 respectively). So far as I can see, the Handbuch makes no mention of this article anywhere, although the bibliography includes the volume Von Arius zum Athanasianum: Studien zur Edition der ‘Athanasius Werke’, ed. A. Von Stockhausen and H. C. Brennecke, Texte und Untersuchungen xliv (Berlin–New York 2010), in which Brennecke disputes some of its conclusions (pp. 67–77).
The most important example of the disregard of my work concerns one of the several depositions of Athanasius by councils of bishops meeting outside Egypt. In 349 a Council of Antioch condemned Athanasius (Sozomenus, HE 4.8.3–4, cf. 3.20.1), and in order to enforce his deposition the emperor Constantius appears to have sent his praetorian prefect Philippus to Egypt to arrest him (Athanasius, Historia Arianorum 51.4). Before Philippus reached Alexandria, however, envoys arrived there from the usurper Magnentius, who had seized power in the west early in 350, seeking the political support of the bishop of Alexandria. Upon receipt of news of his brother's death, the eastern emperor immediately countermanded his orders to Philippus and wrote to Athanasius dishonestly assuring him that he had never borne him any ill-will and wished him to continue in possession of his see ‘for all time’ (Athanasius, Apology before Constantius 23). Nearly twenty years ago I laid out the evidence for the Council of Antioch in 349 and its sequel (Athanasius and Constantius, 98–100, 104), and I have recently repeated my arguments (Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum xi [2007], 396–7). Despite Sozomenus’ explicit statement that a council of eastern bishops, several of whom he names, met in Antioch shortly before the death of Constans and deposed Athanasius, the Handbuch either assumes that there was no Council of Antioch in 349 (pp. 186, 189) or misdates in to 352 (pp. 88). My reconstruction of the episcopal career of Athanasius may be wrong on this point (and on others), but, if it is wrong, then it needs to be disproved, not merely ignored in a volume that purports to be a comprehensive Athanasius Handbuch.
