Boethius (480-524)

A Treatise Against Eutyches and Nestorius

Translated by H. F. Stewart and E. K. Rand

Chapter 3

Wherefore if Person belongs to substances alone, and these rational, and if every nature is a substance, existing not in universals but in individuals, we have found the definition of Person, viz.: “The individual substance of a rational creature.” Now by this definition we Latins have described what the Greeks call υποστασις. For the word person seems to be borrowed from a different source, namely from the masks which in comedies and tragedies used to signify the different subjects of representation. Now persona (“mask”) is derived from personare, with a circumflex on the penultimate. But if the accent is put on the antepenultimate the word will clearly be seen to come from sonus (“sound”), and for this reason, that the hollow mask necessarily produces a larger sound. The Greeks, too, call these masks προσοπα from the fact that they are placed over the face and conceal the countenance from the spectator: παρα του προς τους οπας τιθεσθαι. But since, as we have said, it was by the masks they put on that actors played the different characters represented in a tragedy or comedy—Hecuba or Medea or Simon or Chremes, so also all other men who could be recognized by their several characteristics were designated by the Latins with the term persona and by the Greeks with προσοπα. But the Greeks far more clearly gave to the individual subsistence of a rational nature the name υποστασις, while we through want of appropriate words have kept a borrowed term, calling that persona which they call υποστασις, but Greece with its richer vocabulary gives the name υποστασις to the individual subsistence. And, if I may use Greek in dealing with matters which were first mooted by Greeks before they came to be interpreted in Latin: αι ουσαια εν μεν τοις καθολου ειναι δυνανται εν δε τοις ατομοις και κατα μερος μονοις υφιστανται, that is: essences indeed can have a general existence in universals, but they have particular substantial existence in particulars alone. For it is from particulars that all our comprehension of universals is taken. Wherefore since subsistences are present in universals but acquire substance in particulars they rightly gave the name υποστασις to subsistences which acquired substance through the medium of particulars. For to no one using his eyes with any care or penetration will subsistence and substance appear identical.

For our equivalents of the Greek terms ουσιοσις ουσιοσθαι are respectively subsistentia and subsistere, while their υποστασις υφιστασθαι are represented by our substantia and substare. For a thing has subsistence when it does not require accidents in order to be, but that thing has substance which supplies to other things, accidents to wit, a substrate enabling them to be; for it “substands” those things so long as it is subjected to accidents. Thus genera and species have only subsistence, for accidents do not attach to genera and species. But particulars have not only subsistence but substance, for they, no more than generals, depend on accidents for their Being; for they are already provided with their proper and specific differences and they enable accidents to be by supplying them with a substrate. Wherefore esse and subsistere represent ειναι and ουσιοσθαι, while substare represents υφιστασθαι. For Greece is not, as Marcus Tullius playfully says, short of words, but provides exact equivalents for essentia, subsistentia, substantia and persona—ουσια for essentia, ουσιοσις for subsistentia, υποστασις for substantia, προσοπον for persona. But the Greeks called individual substances υποστασεις because they underlie the rest and offer support and substrate to what are called accidents; and we in our term call them substances as being substrate—υποστασεις, and since they also term the same substances προσοπα, we too may call them persons. So ουσια is identical with essence, ουσιοσις with subsistence, υποστασις with substance, προσοπον with person. But the reason why the Greek does not use προσοπον of irrational animals while we apply the term substance to them is this: This term was applied to things of higher value, in order that what is more excellent might be distinguished, if not by a definition of nature answering to the literal meaning of υφιστασθαι = substare, at any rate by the words υποστασις = substantia.

To begin with, then, man is essence, i.e. ουσια, subsistence, i.e. ουσιοσις, υποστασις, i.e. substance, προσοπον, i.e. person: ουσια or essentia because he is, ουσιοσις or subsistence because he is not accidental to any subject, υποστασις or substance because he is subject to all the things which are not subsistences or ουσιοσεις, while he is προσοπον or person because he is a rational individual. Next, God is ουσια or essence, for He is and is especially that from which proceeds the Being of all things. To Him belong ουσιοσις, i.e. subsistence, for He subsists in absolute independence, and υφιστασθαι, for He is substantial Being. Whence we go on to say that there is one ουσια or ουσιοσις, i.e. one essence or subsistence of the Godhead, but three υποστασεις or substances. And indeed, following this use, men have spoken of One essence, three substances and three persons of the Godhead. For did not the language of the Church forbid us to say three substances in speaking of God, substance might seem a right term to apply to Him, not because He underlies all other things like a substrate, but because, just as He excels above all things, so He is the foundation and support of things, supplying them all with ουσιοσθαι or subsistence.

Chapter 2

Chapter 4