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| Historical Criticism of Mediæval Amplifications. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
V.—Historical
Criticism of Mediæval Amplifications.
But along with the genuine and trustworthy matter, the
compiler has embodied much that is unattested and in many cases
inherently improbable, and even some things that are demonstrably
untrue.
i. The Miraculous Details.—To the category of the
improbable—the fiction of hagiology or the growth of
myth—belong the miracles so freely ascribed to Ephraim and the
miraculous events represented as attending on his career. It is
noteworthy that Ephraim himself, though no doubt he believed that he
was the recipient of Divine intimations in dream or vision, never lays
claim to supernatural powers. Nor does Gregory in the
Encomium attribute to him any such—except in the case of
the rich friend who for his mistaken zeal was given over to an evil
spirit; and on his repentance relieved through Ephraim’s
intercession.278
278 This is related
also in the Greek version of the Testament, but is an evident
interpolation. It is not in the Syriac. | The voice
that issued from his father’s idol foretelling his future war
against idolatry—the answer of the new-born babe that cleared him
from calumny—the crowned phantom on the walls of Nisibis that
scared the besiegers—the plague of insects that drove them into
disastrous flight—the Angel sent to call him back to Edessa when
he had fled thence—the storm hushed and the sea-monster slain by
his word on the voyage to Egypt—the monk whom he delivered at
once from demoniacal possession and from heresy—the sudden gift
of tongues which enabled him to speak Coptic with Bishoi and Greek with
Basil—the restoration to life of the youth who had died of a
viper’s bite at Samosata—the paralytic healed at the church
door in Edessa—the disappearance of the record of guilt from the
scroll on which the penitent of Cæsarea had written her
confession—all these belong to the later growth of legend that
springs up naturally over the tomb of a saint. Some of them may
be safely set aside as purely fictitious; others are probably due to
metaphoric expressions mistaken for literal assertions, or to
rhetorical amplification throwing a false coloring of the supernatural
over ordinary events. Most of them, moreover, bear evident signs
of having been dressed by the compiler into spurious resemblance to the
miraculous narrations in the Old and New Testaments, of the Divine
dealings with Prophets and Apostles,—Elisha, Jonah, St. Peter,
St. Paul, or even of the works of power which attested the mission of
our Lord Himself on earth. In reading these, one cannot fail to
feel painfully—though the narrator seems quite unconscious
of—the irreverence of the travesty. It is noteworthy that
some, even of the non-miraculous incidents of the Life appear to
have been similarly handled. Thus the account of the stoning of
Ephraim outside of Edessa seems modelled after that of St. Paul at
Lystra, (Acts xiv. 19, 20): and the simulated
madness by which he evaded the call of the Episcopate is apparently
borrowed from the history of David’s behavior before Achish and
his servants at Gath (1 Sam. xxi. 13–15). ii. The Demonstrably Incorrect or
Contradictory Statements.—Farther, even when we have laid
aside all that is seemingly exaggerated, invented or mythical in the
Life, there remains much in it that, when critically examined,
proves to need correction or to deserve rejection. We proceed to
deal with some questions which arise affecting the historical
credibility of its narrative.
1. Ephraim’s Alleged Heathen
Parentage.—The heathen parentage assigned to Ephraim, and
consequently the whole narrative of his conversion to Christianity and
his consequent troubles, may be without hesitation discredited.
They are irreconcilable with his own words279
279 This has been
pointed out by Dr. Payne Smith (Dict. of Christian Biography,
Vol. II., p. 137), who cites the passages here adduced, from Opp.
Syr. II. 499; Opp. Gr. I. 129. |
(Adv. Hæreses, XXVI.), “I was born in the way of
truth: though my boyhood understood not the greatness of the
benefit, I knew it when trial came.” So again more
explicitly (if we may trust a Confession which is extant only in
Greek), “I had been early taught about Christ by my parents; they
who begat me after the
flesh, had trained me in the fear of the Lord.…My parents were
confessors before the judge: yea, I am the kindred of
martyrs.”
2. The First and Third Sieges of
Nisibis.—In the narrative of the siege of Nisibis, and
especially of the presence and intercession of St. Jacob the Bishop,
there is confusion and grave error. It is certain that in the
reign of Constantius (337–361), Nisibis was three times besieged
by Sapor.280
280 This was first
clearly established by Spanheim (Observationes in
Julianum, pp. 183 ff.; 188 ff.; 1696) in part
anticipated by Petave (Petavius) and de Valois (Valesius). He has
been followed in this by nearly all historians, including Gibbon
(Decline and Fall. chap. xviii). | The siege in
which St. Jacob was within the city took place in the year 338, and he
died the same year. The attempt of Sapor to employ the
intercepted waters of the Mygdonius for the destruction of its walls,
belongs to a later siege—the third, of the year 350—twelve
years after the death of Jacob. These two sieges are expressly
recorded in the “Paschal (otherwise Alexandrine
Chronicle),” followed by Theophanes in his
Chronographia (who also mentions briefly the intervening siege
of 346); and the account given by the former of these chroniclers (who
wrote in the seventh century) rests on the authority of an Epistle
written by Valgesh, Bishop of Nisibis in 350, who is eulogized by
Ephraim in five of the Nisibene Hymns contained in the present
volume (XIII–XVII.). Other contemporary evidence, fuller,
and at first hand, to the same effect, is forthcoming from two widely
different sources.—As already intimated, the Apostate is here
alone with the champion of the Faith.
In his second Oration281
281 Juliani
Orationes, ed. Spanheim (1666), Orat. II., pp. 62
ff.; see also pp. 26 ff. (Orat. I.). | (addressed, probably in the year 358, to
Constantius, then Emperor) Julian describes the siege with even more
circumstantial detail than our biographer, placing it after the death
of Constans, which took place in January 350, and thus confirming the
date assigned by the Paschal chronicler and by Theophanes.
According to Julian’s account, the embankment formed by Sapor,
the work of four months,282
282 The
Life gives but seventy days as the whole duration of the
siege—a period quite insufficient for the construction of the
embankment. | was so
constructed as to encompass the whole circuit of Nisibis, so that the
river intercepted by it “formed a lake in the middle of which the
city stood as an island,” with “the battlements of its
walls barely appearing above the surrounding waters”; and on the
surface of this encircling lake, he launched armed vessels and floating
war-engines. By these the fortifications were ceaselessly
battered for several days,—till of a sudden the river (then in
flood) burst its barrier, and carried away not only the embankment but
a hundred cubits of the city wall. Through the breach thus made,
Sapor pushed forward his cavalry to lead the advance upon the city
which lay thus seemingly at his mercy. But they proved unable to
overcome the difficulties of the intervening ground—torn up and
flooded as it was by the torrent, and traversed moreover by an ancient
moat—while the Nisibenes in the energy inspired by their deadly
peril, showered missiles upon their assailants as they strove to
struggle onward. The Persian next sent on his elephants; but
their unwieldly bulk served only to enhance the panic and confusion,
and to complete the disaster of his repulse. And when, the next
morning, he prepared to renew the assault, he found himself confronted
by a new wall, hurriedly raised in the night, to fill the gap in the
ramparts, reaching already the height of six feet and manned by fresh
and well-armed defenders. Despairing of success against a
resistance so obstinate, he raised the siege on which he had in vain
expended so much time, labour, treasure, and blood, and retired
ignominiously.
It is needless to add that of the miraculous
incidents of the siege as related in the Life, no trace appears
in Julian’s account. The only Providence he discerns in the
successful defence of Nisibis, is that which he attributes to his
imperial kinsman to whom his fulsome oratory is addressed.
Of the leading facts, as related by Julian, ample corroboration will be found in the
first three of the Nisibene Hymns above referred to. In
the first, Ephraim makes Nisibis herself tell the tale of her
peril: she compares herself to the Ark of the Flood, compassed,
not like it by waters merely, but by “mounds and weapons and
waves” (I., 3); but (ib., 6, 8) the wall had not yet given
way, for he still speaks of it as standing, and prays that it may
continue to stand. This Hymn was therefore written while
the siege was still in progress. In the second Hymn he
celebrates her deliverance and the manner of it,—the very breach
of her walls turned into triumph (II. 5, 7) by their reconstruction and
the assault of the besiegers with their elephants (ib., 17, 18,
19), repulsed in disgrace, ending in immediate retreat.283
283 Ephraim seems to
convey that Sapor, when repulsed, at once withdrew: Julian
represents his withdrawal as gradual. The former probably has in
view the raising of the siege; the latter, the retreat from the invaded
territory. | In the third Hymn, he
follows on similar lines; and adds a point, significant in his
apprehension, that whereas the wall fell on the Sabbath, it was raised
again on the Lord’s day, the Day of the Resurrection (III.
6). In all three Hymns, it is again and again implied or
asserted that this was the third siege of Nisibis (I. 11; II. 5, 19;
III. 11, 12)—and farther (as it seems) the third time that a
breach had been effected in her walls (I. 11; II. 19). In later
Hymns also (XI. 14, 15; XIII. 17) the embanked river, bursting
forth and breaking down the defences of the city, more than once
appears. From one of these we learn incidentally that the
Mygdonius flowed past, not through, Nisibis (XIII. 18, 19);284
284 Compare Sachau’s description, Reise, pp. 390,
391. | from which fact it follows that the
description in the Life, of the manner in which the Persian
engineers employed the river waters against the walls, is to be set
aside in so far as it differs from Julian’s account as confirmed
by the Hymns.
It is remarkable how closely these two accounts, both contemporary with the facts they treat of, agree in all essential
points, though coming to us from sources not only independent, but even
adverse, inter se,—and in forms so little favourable to
exactness of statement as thanksgiving Hymns and encomiastic
Orations. When from Ephraim’s strophes we omit his pious
ascriptions of praise to God, and from Julian’s periods, the
fulsomeness of his panegyric on the Emperor, the residuum of material
fact is in either case much the same; the main outlines of narrative
(related or implied) are identical in both writers, each unconsciously
attests the truthfulness of the other. Both are farther confirmed
in great measure by the account of this siege embodied in the Pascha
Chronicle above referred to, which (as already stated) rests on
information drawn from a written record left by Valgesh who was Bishop
of Nisibis at the time, and to whose prayers Ephraim (Hymn XIII.
17)285
285 That Valgesh is the
“third” Bishop here meant, appears by comparison with Hymn
XVII. 2, where the three are named, Jacob, Babu (not elsewhere
mentioned), and Valgesh. | attributed the speedy restoration of the
breach in the city wall.
In confusing this siege (of 350, in the time of Valgesh), with the previous one (of 338, in the time of Jacob), our
biographer, with most subsequent writers down to the eighteenth
century, has been misled by following Theodoret’s narration in
his Ecclesiastical History (II. 30).286
286 So (e.g.) Baronius,
Annales (s. q. 338); Acta Sanctorum, Febr. (I. p.
51). A few quite recent writers follow these. This error of
Theodoret thus ascribing to the first siege the events which belong to
the history of the third, is easily accounted for. His narrative
of the siege and the breaching of the walls, the apparition, and St.
Jacob’s prayer answered by the plague of mosquitoes, originally
appeared in his earlier work, the Religious History—a
collection of lives of miracle-working saints of whom St. Jacob stands
first—from which (as he himself notes) he has transferred it with
little change, to his Ecclesiastical History. As the
biographer of this, the greatest Bishop of Nisibis, Theodoret would
naturally associate with his name all that history or tradition
reported of Divine protection extended to the city in her
perils—especially in those of her last and most signal siege
which ended in her most signal deliverance. He probably knew that
a siege of Nisibis had occurred in St. Jacob’s time, and would
readily overlook the brief interval of twelve years by which the
saint’s death preceded the later siege.
One of the Nisibene Hymns
(XIII. 18, 19, 21) suggests a further explanation how this third siege
came to be attached to the legend of St. Jacob. His body was
treasured reverently in the city, and to its presence her deliverance
was attributed. Thus, he was still (in Ephraim’s words)
“the fountain within her,” “the fruit in her
bosom,” “the body laid within her that became for her a
wall without.” The traditions of that dead presence in the
last siege, and of his living presence in the first, would soon blend
together; and the expression of pious gratitude for the protection
ascribed by the besieged of 350 to the virtue of his remains, would be
mistaken as evidence that the man himself was among them to help them
by his prayers and exhortations in the struggle by which the fall of
their city was so narrowly averted. | The account of the siege given in
the Life is in fact a mere reproduction, somewhat abridged, and slightly varied, of Theodoret’s, from which it derives also its
computation of the time occupied by the siege as but twenty
days,—a period obviously inadequate for the vast engineering
works for which the four months assigned by Julian are certainly not
too much,—as well as its description of the method and aim of
those works. In Theodoret likewise are found the two supernatural
incidents of Sapor’s discomfiture, both repeated in the
Life,—neither of which is affirmed or even hinted at by
Ephraim any more than by Julian; the appearance of the Imperial Phantom
on the wall, and the plague of insects sent in answer to Jacob’s,
or, as the Life has it, to Ephraim’s prayer. Of
these, the former, but not the latter, finds place in the Paschal
Chronicle, and (in exaggerated form) in Theophanes. Whether,
in this instance, the chronicler’s statement, which is guardedly
expressed,287
287 In the Chronicle, we read that
Sapor saw, in the daytime, “a man running to and fro on
the walls,” in the likeness of the Emperor; but again, we are
told of “the angel that appeared.” In
Theodoret’s narratives the apparition wears the royal
“purple and diadem,” and is described as
“divine” (Hist. Relig.), and
“incorporeal” (Hist. Eccles.). In the
Chronography, “an angel stands on the tower, in shining
raiment, holding by the hand the Emperor Constantius”; a
duplication of the vision which seemingly arose from a misunderstanding
of the Chronicle.
That Constantius was not in Nisibis
during this siege, is a point on which all authorities are
agreed. Julian, while lavishing on the Emperor unmeasured praises
for the repulse of Sapor, attributes it not to his personal presence,
but to his foresight in previous preparations made a year before.
He is known, however, to have sojourned in the city in May,
345,—see Cod. Theodosianus, (XI. 7, 5) for a law issued
thence by him on the 12th of that month (Lex. 5 de
exactionibus). | or any nucleus
of it, was derived from the Epistle of Valgesh,—or whether
he borrowed it from Theodoret or some one of Theodoret’s sources,
or some such authority—is matter of conjecture.288
288 The Nisibene Hymns, only
recovered some fifty years ago from the Nitrian Monastery of the
Theotokos, and first printed in 1866, yielding as they do authoritative
and contemporary confirmation of the accounts of the siege given by
Julian and by Valgesh, come in as decisive evidence to prove that the
Chronicler of the seventh century and the Chronographer of the ninth
had better fortune or better judgment in their choice of authorities
than Theodoret in the fifth. It is, moreover, a signal instance
of the true historical instinct that guided Gibbon in his great work,
that in relating this history (ch. xviii.), he followed Julian and the
Chronicle, and refused to be misled (as our biographer was) by
Theodoret—except as regards St. Jacob whom he supposed to have
been still Bishop in 350.
The first to point out this error
as to St. Jacob, was Valesius in his note on the passage in Theodoret
(H. E. II. 30), as above. He remarked that “the
Alexandrine (Paschal) Chronicle makes Vologeses (Valgesh), not
Jacob, Bishop of Nisibis in 350.” It was replied (and with
justice) that the Chronicle, though it records the siege, and
cites the Epistle of Valgesh, Bishop of the city, does not say
that he was Bishop at the time of the siege. Another Chronicle,
the Edessene (a relic of the sixth century), first printed by Assemani
in 1719 (Biblioth. Orient. I., pp. 388 ff.) determines
338 as the date of Jacob’s death, and 361 as that of
Valgesh. Our Nisibene Hymns (see above, note 4) make it
plain that Valgesh was bishop in 350, as Valesius rightly (though on
insufficient grounds) laid down. |
3. Constantius and
Constans.—The Life errs grossly (as already noticed)
in making Constans, who died in 350, and never reigned in the East, the
successor of his brother Constantius, who survived till 361.
4. The Alleged Sojourn in
Egypt.—The sojourn of Ephraim for eight years in Egypt, after
he had taken up his abode in Egypt, and before his visit to Cappadocia,
is impossible. It was in July, 363, that Nisibis was surrendered
to Persia by Jovian, which court was the cause, as the Life (no
doubt rightly) states, of Ephraim’s final departure from that
city to Beth-Garbaia, thence to Amid, and finally, “at the end of
the year,” to Edessa. It follows, therefore, that he did
not reach Edessa till 364. In Edessa, or in his cell on the
adjacent “Mount” according to the Life, he lived,
worked, wrote commentaries and polemical discourses, taught, and formed
a school of disciples, before his alleged journey to Egypt. It is
therefore implied that he spent years in or near Edessa before he set
out on that journey, which cannot therefore be placed so early as
365. Even if we assign to it the improbably early date of 366,
the eight years in Egypt bring us to 374, or at earliest 373, for his visit to
the Cæsarean Cappadocia. Now there is a prevailing weight of
testimony to the effect that Ephraim died in 373, which date, if
accepted, leaves no time for the incidents of his life after his return
to Edessa. This, however, cannot be urged against our biographer,
who (as will be shown) assumes that he lived till 379. But the
Life represents him as resident in or near Edessa during the
persecution which that city suffered from the Emperor Valens, which (as
stated above, p. 132) took place probably in 371; certainly not later
than 372, at which date (according to the biographer) he was still in
Egypt. In fact, even without going into particulars, it is
evident that between Ephraim’s arrival in Edessa in 364 and the
persecution of Valens in 370–2, the eight years’ sojourn in
Egypt and the visit to Cappadocia would so fill the interval as to
leave no time for the prolonged Edessa residence, before and after that
sojourn, which the Life, in common with all other authorities,
attributes to Ephraim, and in virtue of which his name is inseparably
associated with the history of Edessa.
If, with the Vatican recension of the Life,
we read “Julian” for Valens, as the name of the persecutor
of Edessa, the impossibility becomes yet more absurdly glaring.
For Julian died in 363, and before that year Ephraim had not migrated
from Nisibis to Edessa.
It is no doubt possible that Ephraim may have visited Egypt,289
289 The shorter
Syriac Life agrees in affirming the fact of his visit to Egypt,
but says nothing of its duration. No other authority, earlier or
contemporary, hints at it. | as the
Life affirms, before proceeding to Cæsarea: as an
anchorite he would naturally be drawn to the land where the anchorite
life had its origin and its greatest development. Yet it is
hardly probable that, eager as he was to see Basil at Cæsarea, he
would, when setting out on his travels, have directed his course to
Egypt first,—a country so distant, and lying in a direction so
different, from Cappadocia. This improbability would naturally
fail to strike our biographer, who appears to have supposed
Basil’s Cæsarea (if indeed he had any definite idea of its
situation) to have been the maritime city of that name in
Palestine. One can hardly avoid suspecting that this whole
narrative of the visit to Egypt—unknown as it is to all
authorities save our Life (in its twofold recension), and the
shorter form of the same—may have been invented by some compiler
or reviser, writing in, or for, one of the Egyptian monasteries of the
Nitrian Desert, and seeking to gratify the Syrian ascetics who were
numerous in that region, by making it the scene of an episode in the
life of the most famous of Syrian ascetics. It certainly has the
air of an interpolation, coming as it does between the description of
Ephraim’s longing desire to see Basil, and the narrative of the
fulfilment of that desire by his visit to Cæsarea. More
particularly, as regards the story of the visit of Ephraim to the
Nitrian Saint Pesoës (or Bishoi), it is to be noted that it is
mentioned, not in the Parisian recension of the Life, but only
in that of the Vatican ms. It is a
significant fact that this ms., which is thus
our only written authority for the alleged visit, was written
(probably) about the year 1100, in the Nitrian monastery of “Amba
Bishoi” (St. Pesoës).290
290 Assemani,
Biblioth. Orient., I., p. 46, note 1. | On the
other hand, it is to be added that a tradition of Ephraim’s
sojourn in Egypt, connecting him with Pesoës, lingered in quite
recent times, and may probably still linger, among the monks, Syrian
and Coptic, of the Nitrian region. Travellers of the seventeenth,
and even eighteenth, century, tell of a tamarind tree which was shown
to them within the precincts of the Syrian monastery of the Theotokos
in that region, reputed to have grown from Ephraim’s staff which
he set in the ground on his arrival there, as he was about to enter the cell of Pesoës.291
291 It is mentioned by Huntington
(afterwards Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, and finally Bishop of
Raphoe) who visited the place, 1678–9 (see his
Epistolæ, XXXIX., p. 69): again by J. S. Assemani in
1715 (see reference in note 6). More recent visitors (Lord de la
Zouche in 1837, and Archdeacon Tattam in 1839) do not speak of
it.
Of the Nitrian monasteries (reputed to have once numbered fifty, or even more), the principal one, that of
the Theotokos, whence the libraries of the Vatican and of the British
museum have derived their most precious acquisitions of Syriac
mss., belongs to the Syrian Jacobites, whose
Church has always been in full communion with that of the Copts.
A second belongs to the Copts; a third to the Greeks. The fourth
(that of St. Pesoës) does not appear to be specially appropriated,
but to be mainly Coptic, though (as appears above) not to the exclusion
of Syrians. | It is
probable that this legend of the staff (which reminds one of that of
the staff of St. Joseph of Arimathea and the Glastonbury thorn tree)
may have grown out of the belief that Ephraim once visited the
monastery,—which belief again may have been originated by the
pious fiction of the compiler or interpolator of the Life in its
Vatican form. It is easy to imagine how gladly a community of
Syrian monks in this Egyptian solitude would listen to what professed
to be a record of the greatest of Syrian monks, a recluse like
themselves, the author of the Sermons to Ascetics which they had read
or listened to, and of the many hymns which enriched their offices and
quickened their devotions;—and how ready they would be to welcome
as fact the story of his sojourn in their valley, and to imagine that a
memorial of it survived among the trees of their garden.
5. Interval between Visit to Basil and
Persecution by Valens.—The interval of four years or more,
which the Life seems to place between Ephraim’s return
from Cæsarea to Edessa, and the persecution of the Edessenes by
Valens, is likewise impossible. For at Cæsarea all agree
that Ephraim found Basil Archbishop. But Basil was consecrated
late in 370, and therefore Ephraim’s first meeting with him,
which was on the Feast of the Epiphany, cannot be placed earlier than
January, 371. But the persecution took place probably in 371, or
at latest in 373—thus reducing the possible length of interval to
two years at most—probably to a few months. It may be said,
however, that the biographer, though he relates the persecution after
mentioning the four years’ interval, does not mean to imply that
it was subsequent in time to that interval. But it will be shown
farther on (under next head) that the four years’ interval is
inadmissible, independently of the date of that persecution; inasmuch
as Ephraim survived only three years after his visit to
Basil.
6. Death of Basil before that of
Ephraim.—The story of the lady who was sent by Basil to
Ephraim, and by Ephraim back to Basil, only in time to see his
corpse,—and of Ephraim’s grief for Basil’s death,
cannot be accepted unless we set aside the consent of the chronologers,
who agree that Ephraim died in 373,292
292 See Professor
Lamy’s edition of Ephraim, II., coll. 94ff., for the
authorities on this point,—of which the chief are:—The
Edessene Chronicle (sixth century) and Jacob of Edessa (seventh
century—cited by Elias of Nisibis), both of whom give 373 as the
date, as does also the early Chronicle contained in the “Book
of the Caliphs.” Jerome (De Viris. Illustr.
cxv.) merely says that Ephraim died in the reign of
Valens,—i.e. not later than 378, and therefore before
Basil. | —whereas
Basil survived to 1st January, 379. It is true that there is
extant among the Greek works ascribed to Ephraim, an encomium on
Basil,293
293 Opp.
Græc.,II., 289 ff. | which seems to be genuine. This,
however, is not to be regarded as an eulogium pronounced after
Basil’s death; but rather as a panegyric in which the living man
is apostrophized.294
294 See Lamy as
above, coll. 84 ff. | We may
safely conclude that the story, which rests on a basis of erroneous
chronology, is itself a fiction.
But the story of Ephraim’s helpful intervention and activity in a time of famine, which is undated, having
early attestation, may well be accepted as true, and assigned to the
winter of 372–3. The authorities who attest the date of his
death as 373, place it in the month of Haziran (June);295
295 On the 9th,
according to Chron. Edes. and the shorter Life; the
Vatican Life says the 15th; the Book of the Caliphs (see
Land’s Anecdota, Tom. I., p. 15 [Syr. text]) and most
other authorities, the 18th; Dionysius, in his Chronicle, the
19th (ap. Assemani, B. O. II., p. 54). | and we may reasonably conjecture that the
exertions and anxieties of
the season of famine had told too heavily on a frame already wasted by
years and by excessive austerities, and had thus hastened his
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