The Greek Fathers

Let heathen sing thy heathen praise

Fall'n Greece! the thought of holier days

    In my sad heart abides;

For sons of thine Truth's first hour

Were tongues and weapons of His power,

Born of the Spirit's fiery shower,

    Our fathers and our guides.

All thine is Clement's varied page?

And Dionysius, ruler sage,

    In days of doubt and pain;

And Origen with eagle eye;

And saintly Basil's purpose high,

To smite imperial heresy

    And cleanse the Altar's stain.

From thee the glorious preacher came,

With soul of zeal and lips of flame,

    A court's stern martyr-guest;

And thine, O inexhaustive race!

Was Nazianzen's heaven-taught grace;

And royal-hearted Athanase,

    With Paul's own mantel blessed.

St. John Henry Newman

St. John Henry Newman shows his theological and historical depth of knowledge in a stream of beauty in his poetry. This one, called "The Greek Fathers", shows the flow of the early Church fathers through the Greek Church. He starts with a lament over the Fall of Constantinople, as the heathen Saracens cheer its downfall, "let the heathen sing thy heathen praise / fall'n Greece..." and then steps back in time to when Greece was Christian. The Greece he refers to is not Ancient Greece of the Platonists nor is it the Macedonian Empire. The Greece he refers to is none other than the Eastern Roman Empire. The Eastern Roman Empire would commonly be called the Greek Empire after the coronation of Charlemagne. After the Fall of Constantinople, Christianity would remain suppressed under Ottoman rule. There was a decline in the intellectual tradition of the Eastern Church. It is this that St. John Henry Newman reflects on. St. Clement of Alexandria, the founder of the Alexandrian school, St. Dionysius whose theological treatises have become influential in the Christian Neo-Platonic thought, Origen who continued the school of Alexandria and influenced an allegorical method of understanding Scriptures. Basil wrote to an imperial officer, the preacher, St. John Chrysostom, was excommunicated by a council formed by an Empress, St. Gregory the Theologian is who is referred to by Nazianzen, he is one of three to be given that epithet, and Athanase, St. Athanasius, who was chased away from his home but declared himself to be against the world.

Yes, let us praise the Greek fathers!