"City of Christ" in Early Christian Literature

The New Jerusalem. Armenian manuscript by Malnazar and Aghap'ir in New Julfa bible, 1645.

Background

I'm currently writing a long article on the reception of the New Jerusalem in apocryphal literature, esp. the Clementine Recognitiones Book 1, the Latin Visio Pauli (and the Apocalypse of Paul in Syriac), the First Apocryphal Apocalypse of John (in Greek), and The Book of Bartholomew (which exists only in Coptic).

I was curious about the expression "City of Christ" that appears in the Visio Pauli, so thought I'd quickly dig through the Brepols Library of Latin Texts to see what turned up. Strikingly little. How about Greek? Also very little. And same for Syriac and Coptic. And yet there were some really quite interesting parallels and places where the term showed up. 

I thought it was going to be a 10-line (and 10-minute!) footnote, but after doing all the digging and a bit of bibliography (for a few hours!), I realized that this is probably the basis of another article (if indeed one hasn't been written already--if so, I haven't yet been able to find it). 

I'm already at 800 words, and it's basically simply a register of passages, with very little analysis, though I do begin a categorization. 

A few patterns do begin to emerge already, however: The expression often has an eschatological cast, referring to the millennial or eternal destination of the saints. Sometimes refers to the church here and now. It can also refer to cities where Christ spent important parts of his life. In Greek, it tends to also show up as a label for Constantine's restored Jerusalem, which work began around 330 once his mother Helena was reported to have found there the True Cross. Occasionally, it can also refer to Constantinople, and even in one text, to the Theotokos, Mary, the Mother of God.

There's much more to be written on this--again, an article is in order. But for now, I'm putting it here, since some colleagues have expressed some interest in what I've found. Please forgive the incomplete bibliography. If you happen to find some of the missing info (esp. page numbers--not sure why I didn't get them when I copied and pasted from my sources), let me know and I'll fill them in. I'm also having trouble preserving formatting with this copy and past, so please look past the missing italics for book titles. I'm sure you're clever enough to follow along...

Note: I'm also interested in the term in Arabic, Ethiopic, Nubian, Armenian, Georgian, Slavonic, etc., but life is short. I might have to wait until I have attained to the City of Christ itself and ask it's residents...

The “City of Christ” in pre-nineth century literature

The term “city of Christ” is very rare in literature of the period under review, which extends up until about the 8th century.

Latin sources

In Latin literature (per Brepols’ Library of Latin Texts search function), the rare expression ciuitas Christi, when used at all, refers to the eschatological New Jerusalem but twice: 

1. in the Visio Pauli (§§21 and 22)

2. In ca.700 in Ps.-Hilary of Arles, Tractatus in epist. Petri I, linea : 230 in CCSL 108B (R.E. McNally, 1973).

Though still rare, it is more commonly used to refer to the church in the present age. Most of the occurances are listed here:

1. Augustine, Serm. 349 (PL39:1530 line 9); Augustine, DCD 17.20; 20.11; 22.6;

2. Jerome, Comm. in Malach. 3 (CCSL 76A:[page] line 163);

3. Primasius, Comm. Apoc. 5.20 (CCSL 92:[page] line 172) (A.W. Adams, 1985);

4. Bede, In Regum librum xxx quaestiones 30 (CCSL 119:[page] line 17) (D. Hurst, 1962);

5. Alcuin, De fide sanctae trinitatis et de incarnatione Christi 3.19 in E. Knibbs et E. A. Matter, CCCM 249:127 line 8 (2012).

Otherwise the expression in Latin refers to Galilee as the place of Christ’s early life, e.g. : 

1. Augustine, De cons. euang. 2.25.58; CSEL 43:161

2. Bede, In Lucae euangelium expositio 2.5 (CCSL 120: [page], line 768) (D. Hurst, 1960)

Later, it comes to refer to Capernaum (in the ninth-century Anonymi miscellanea biblica in Lucam, PL 106:1507 line 19).

Greek sources

For the Greek literature, the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae reveals that it is occasionally used in Greek sources. Per my search, it never once points to the eschatological Jerusalem (earthly or heavenly) prior to the tenth century. Instead, during the period leading up to the 8th century, it refers to the following:

First, to the earthly city of Jerusalem, where Christ suffered, died, and was resurrected (e.g. Ps.-John Chrysostom, In sanctum Stephanum (β), PG 63:933 line 6).

It also refers to the same earthly Jerusalem, specifically as refurbished by Constantine with the Martyrion and Anastasis churches at its center:

1. e.g. Sozomen, Hist. eccl. 2.3.7 in J. Bidez and G.C. Hansen, Sozomenus. Kirchengeschichte, GCS 50: [page], (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1960),

2. Vita Marthae matris Symeonis Stylitae iunioris 67, line 4 in P. van den Ven, La vie ancienne de S. Syméon Stylite le jeune (521-592), vol. 2, Subsidia hagiographica 32 (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1970),

3. Leontius, Vita Joannis Eleemosynarii episcopi Alexandrini, in A.-J. Festugière and L. Rydén, Léontios de Néapolis, Vie de Syméon le Fou et Vie de Jean de Chypre, Bibliothèque archéologique et historique 95 (Paris: Geuthner, 1974): 343-409, p. 364.

4. Vita Nicolai Sionitae 9, in I. Sevcenko and N.P. Sevcenko, The Life of Saint Nicholas of Sion (The Archbishop Iakovos Library of Ecclesiastical and Historical Sources 10 (Brookline, Mass.: Hellenic College Press, 1984),

5. Evagrius Scholasticus, Hist. eccl. in J. Bidez and L. Parmentier, The ecclesiastical history of Evagrius with the scholia (London: Methuen, 1898), p. 29.

6. Theodorus, Vita Theodosii (H. Usener, Der heilige Theodosios. Schriften des Theodoros und Kyrillos, Leipzig: Teubner, 1890: 3-113, pp. 7, 60)

In other places, it refers to the church, for example:

1. Cyril of Alexandria, Comm. Isa. PG 70:569 line 19

2. Probably also in Hesychius, Commentarius brevis, Psa. 47 3 in V. Jagic, Supplementum Psalterii Bononiensis. Incerti auctoris explanatio Graeca (Vienna: Holzhausen, 1917).

In one case in a text dating from after the fifth or sixth century, “the city of Christ” is used as a name for the city of Constantinople: Vita sancti Sampsonis Xenodochi 3 in F. Halkin, “Saint Samson le Xénodoque de Constantinople (VIe siècle),” Rivista di studi bizantini e neoellenici 14-16 (1977-1979): 7-17.

Finally, in two instances in the Canones ad deiparam sive Thotocaria, the expression refers to the Theotokos: see section 3, canon 77, lines 23 and 28 [one missing]) in S. Eustratiades and Monachus Spyridon, Μνημεῖα Ἁγιολογικά: Θεοτοκάριον, vol. 1 [Ἁγιορείτικη Βιβλιοθήκη 7-8 (L'Ermitage: Chennevières-sur-Marne, 1931).

Syriac Sources

As for Syriac, the expression “city of Christ” (ܡܕܝܢܬܐ ܕܡܫܝܚܐ) occurs in the eschatological sense only in the present work, i.e. §§23 and 24 respectively. In the Chronicle of Joshua the Stylite, the term is used to refer to Edessa; however, in that case it merely shows that Edessa is a city belonging to Christ as opposed to any other potentate.

Coptic Sources

In Coptic, which I have never worked with, I find the term (ⲧⲡⲟⲗⲓⲥ ⲙ̄ⲡⲭⲣⲓⲥⲧⲟⲥ) only in the Sahidic Coptic version of the Apocalypse of Paul (again, in §§23-24), in the Martyrdom of Ss. Paese and Thecla (which the text describes as “shining seven times brighter than the sun”), and again in the Book of Bartholomew 10, 11, and 14 (in Tony Burke and Brent Landau, eds., New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, Vol. 2 [William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2020], pp. here), discussed elsewhere in the article of which this was originally a footnote. In all cases, it refers to an eschatological city that is, at least in part, inspired by John’s New Jerusalem.

Coptic Update: 

I've just learned about a new tool for Coptic corpora, ANNIS, which finds more (but not the Apoc. Paul. or Mart. Paes. Thecl.): 

Query: norm=‎"ⲧ‎" . norm=‎"ⲡⲟⲗⲓⲥ‎" .1,3 norm=‎"ⲙ‎" . norm=‎/ⲡⲉ?‎/ . norm=‎"ⲭⲣⲓⲥⲧⲟⲥ‎"

Results: 

And summarized from Claude Code: