by Matthew Gaetano

The post that follows is a bit unusual. I’m following the thread of different meanings of the word Philadelphia, but the path is rather circuitous. I hope that some of the elements of the exploration here turn out to be interesting.

I was recently reading about medieval accounts of the book of Revelation and took note of the significance of the church of Philadelphia (Rev. 3:7-13). For example, in Joseph Ratzinger’s The Theology of History in Saint Bonaventure, he discusses

the angel of Philadelphia, to whom the sixth letter is addressed. The most significant and helpful clues in this text are: “clavis David” [key of David] and “porta aperta” [open door]. When these two are taken in connection with the sixth age of the Old Testament, which was an age of prophecy, they make it possible to predict that we may await a new insight into Scripture. This in turn makes it possible to draw conclusions which will have to be treated. It is in the same direction that the etymology of the word Philadelphia is worked out. This etymology is taken from the work of Haymo, and the name is understood to mean “Conservans hereditatem” (26-27) (bolding added throughout the post).

Ratzinger goes on to discuss a few other significant uses of the number six (bowls, trumpets, etc.), and then he says,

the basic lines for determining the final course of the sixth period are somewhat clear and unified. And when we see how everything falls together almost naturally for Bonaventure.

This language about the sixth period of Church history caught my eye, especially because the sixth age is preparing the way in Bonaventure for a seventh age of peace, of the Church on earth becoming like “the Church triumphant in as far as this is possible in her pilgrim-state” (20), of “a transformation of the world” (17).

Bonaventure’s vision of the progress of the Church on earth before the Second Coming of Christ is worthy of more reflection, which I hope to take up in future posts. But in light of our unexpected series of posts about the Quakers (here, here, here), who of course founded Philadelphia as the capital of Pennsylvania, I couldn’t help but be struck by the etymology of the word Philadelphia. Isn’t it simply the City of Brotherly Love? So, I checked Bonaventure’s apparent source, Haymo of Halberstadt (d. 853), a monk of Fulda, a student of Alcuin of York, and a bishop in the first half of the ninth century. It turns out, though, that this commentary is now generally ascribed to Haimo of Auxerre (d. c. 865), a Benedictine of Saint-Germaine. (There’s also a Haymo of Hirschau (d. c. 1107) associated with some of these exegetical works, but that is just too many Haymos!)

At any rate, despite quite a few fascinating issues surrounding Haimo of Auxerre’s commentary on the book of Revelation (here and here), the question here is this strange “etymology” of Philadelphia. In his commentary (col. 989), he actually begins as we might expect today with a reference to brotherly love (dilectio fraterna). The Venerable Bede (d. 735) is his source for this rather straightforward view. Haimo goes on to say that “by this name is designated the universal Church, which dwells (versatur) in love of God and neighbor, and which is proved to be loved by the Lord.” Haimo then refers to Autpert Ambrose (d. 784), a Frankish Benedictine, who explains Philadelphia as “saving the inheritance of the Lord” (salvans haereditatem Domini). (Pope Benedict XVI gave an audience about this figure in 2009.) This is the source provided by Ratzinger above for Bonaventure’s account of the word Philadelphia.

Autpert and Haimo say that the name of Philadelphia also expresses the Church, which saves or preserves itself when it advances (proficit) in faith and good works and never draws back from the will of its Creator. According to Haimo, this is the inheritance of the Lord, about which the Father speaks to the Son through the Psalmist: “Ask of me, and I will give thee the Gentiles for thy inheritance” (2:8). (Here is a link to the commentary of Autpert Ambrose for anyone who might be interested.)

One sees this connection of Philadelphia with saving or inheritance in quite a few texts (here, here, here, here, here, here, here (p. 34), here, and here). I’m still not sure about all of the twists and turns of this story, but it turns out that a possible foundation may be Jerome’s On Hebrew Names. The great translator of much of the Bible from Hebrew and Greek was apparently working to improve his Hebrew in the late-380s after settling in Bethlehem. Jerome was inspired by the Jewish thinker, Philo of Alexandria. He also was imitating Origen (d. c. 253) in “add[ing] the meaning of the words and names in the New Testament, so that the fabric might receive its last touch and might stand complete.” In his account of Philadelphia (or Filadelphia) – which isn’t a Hebrew word! – in the book of Revelation, Jerome gave an account of the word as meaning “saving the one adhering to the Lord” (salvans haerentem Domino) (cols. 857-58). I still don’t know exactly why Jerome made this claim (if anyone has any ideas, please comment!), but a statement of this sort from Jerome provides a more solid foundation for why figures like Bonaventure said what they did about the word. It would be strange if all of this started in Haimo or Autpert, I suppose.

Please forgive the circuitous route here, but I never knew that the assumed meaning of Philadelphia was anything other than “brotherly love.” Just thinking about the name and its complex history got me thinking about William Penn and the Quakers in colonial America. When William Penn named the American colonial town Philadelphia, did he want to build something with deeper (and more complex and possibly tangled) historical roots than simply a City of Brotherly Love? Of course, a city characterized by religious freedom was already a great achievement in 1682:

That all persons living in this province, who confess and acknowledge the one Almighty and eternal God, to be the Creator, Upholder and Ruler of the world; and that hold themselves obliged in conscience to live peaceably and justly in civil society, shall, in no ways, be molested or prejudiced for their religious persuasion, or practice, in matters of faith and worship, nor shall they be compelled, at any time, to frequent or maintain any religious worship, place or ministry whatever (XXXV).

It turns out that there have been suggestions that William Penn’s naming of Philadelphia was meant to evoke the church in Revelation 3. In John Russell Young’s (d. 1899) Memorial History of the City of Pennsylvania, he says,

When and how the name Philadelphia first suggested itself to Penn can only be conjectured. No records are left to establish with certainty whence he took the name; but … the probabilities point to the … passages in the New Testament as its immediate source. As appears from his countless citations, Penn’s acquaintance with the Scriptures was extremely full and accurate. He was familiar with the names of the seven churches in Asia Minor, as appears from his “Address to Protestants,” etc. […], where he names over the seven cities, including Philadelphia. This Address was written in 1679, scarcely more than a year before he received his Patent, and it may well have been during the composition of this work that he was struck with the suitability of the name for a city where Christian principles were to be the foundation of the political system. For Penn had a good knowledge of Greek, and, in reading his own Greek Testament, his earnest and peace-loving nature no doubt was often impressed with the euphony of the word Φιλαδέλφεια (‘brotherly, or sisterly, love’) and with the beauty of the sentiment which it designates (36).

Young continues with a discussion of other ancient cities of Philadelphia and then says that

there remains for mention the Society of the Philadelphians, a congregation of followers of Jane Leade (1623-1704), in England, and of Jacob Böhme (1608-1698), in Germany. Some have seen in this Society, whose beliefs differed but little in essentials from those of the early Quakers, the prototype of that ideal community which Penn aimed to establish in the New World. While this cannot be disproved […], it appears that there was no movement among the Philadelphians to form an ideal community, separate from the world, until long after the city was named. It was 1690 that plans for a Philadelphian community were formed in Germany; the experiment was made in London 1695.

A few decades later (1925), James McKirdy argued “with all due humility” that Young’s case lacked evidence and even sufficient plausibility (39-40). His argument that Penn “did not know the history of the Lydian town” of Philadelphia – the city in Asia Minor addressed by John the Revelator – doesn’t seem like a powerful objection to me. But he concludes that “love of the brethren” or “brotherly love” in Scripture was enough to account for the name of “his projected city,” the one referred to by Penn himself as “the virgin settlement of this province, named before thou wert born.” “If this is so,” McKirdy concluded, “the city on the Delaware is not named for the ancient city in Lydia, but for a thought in Penn’s mind — a thought and a hope.”

More recently, J. William Frost, who was a professor of Quaker history at Swarthmore College, seems to return to Young’s basic insight when he wrote:

An additional confirmation of the “holy experiment” is in the name Penn gave to the new colony’s chief city, Philadelphia. Historians stressing the Greek derivation of the name frequently refer to the city of brotherly love. The scriptural references are ignored. In the third chapter of the book of Revelation, the “angel of the church in Philadelphia” writes, “I know your works,” and prophecies [!] that Philadelphia will become “the city of my God, the New Jerusalem which comes down from my God out of heaven.” In the letters Penn linked Pennsylvania to the new Jerusalem of the prophets; now he again links the old city with his new capitol [!]. … Surely Penn’s contemporaries understood both the brotherly love and the new Jerusalem connotations in the word Philadelphia (584-85).

So, it is at least plausible that the medieval Franciscan, Bonaventure, and the founder of Pennsylvania, the Quaker William Penn, shared a conception of the church of Philadelphia in Revelation 3 as playing a special role for understanding Christianity in the present and future. Penn’s holy experiment of having a city of brotherly love is powerful enough; adding these resonances with the Christian tradition and that tradition’s vision of the eschaton enriches his experiment. Penn may not have known about the rich use of the church of Philadelphia and the notion of the sixth age in some medieval eschatological accounts; he almost certainly had no idea that Philadelphia also meant – for whatever reason – “saving the inheritance of the Lord.” But it is a happy accident – a fortunate mistake – that the idea of Philadelphia can point to the need to conserve, preserve, or save what has been inherited and that it also is a place of brotherly and sisterly love for those who become “pillars” in the “temple of God” – to whom, in the words of Revelation 3:12, “I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name.” Philadelphia thus becomes an image of the whole Church which is called to preserve what has already been handed down to her and to look forward to what has not yet taken place, the revelation of the sons and daughters of God eagerly awaited by all of creation (Romans 8:18-25).